Tongued With Fire
by Gil Shalos1
Summary: Hill House is a school for murder - and when one of the residents applies their lessons within its walls, is it a crime or is it treason? (Follows "The Year's Midnight").
1. What We Call The Beginning

A/N: slight touch of AU - in "All Clear" it seems implied that Andrew and Sam have had no contact since he threw her over in "Invasion" (April 1942). However, I had them run into each other at the end of "The Year's Midnight" and - well, you'll see.

* * *

**what the dead had no speech for, when living,  
They can tell you, being dead: the communication  
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.**

**T S Eliot ****_Little Gidding_**** 1942**

* * *

_Thursday 4 February 1943 _

_Not much happening. Should be grateful - crime is a Bad Thing so not a lot of crime is a Good Thing but it's dull. Dull, dull, DULL. Am not the only one thinking so altho' no-one of course says so because of crime being a Bad Thing. But Brookie has taken to hanging around when I'm servicing the car offering "helpful" advice hah-hah and Mr F is reading ALL the station reports and not just the important ones, but the ones he usually leaves to M to handle, which has been a Rude Shock_ _to some. Of course M has less to do as a result and not being one to knock off early he just hangs around the corridor Alone And Palely Loitering_ _as it were and looking hopefully at every opened door in case it should be a Crisis. _

_Which it never is. _

_We all need a nice juicy murder to get things back to normal._

_Pref. of someone not very nice of course. Altho' is terrible when someone gets bumped off who RICHLY deserves it and Mr F has to arrest someone Quite Nice who just did what everyone wanted to._

_P. sure He Had It Coming not a defense in law. Must ask M. _

* * *

Foyle made a neat note in the margin of the file and capped his pen again. Constable Marksbury's reports were clear and to the point, but sadly marred by the young man's apparently congenital uncertainty as to the correct spelling of 'proceed'. Foyle had brought it to his attention the previous day, and Marksbury's reaction, if this report was anything to go by, was to work through every possible variation in the hope of hitting the correct one at least once.

_Covering_, _as our American friends would say, his bases._

He picked up his pen again and drew a neat line through 'prucede', then glanced up at Sam, whiling away the hour with a book as she waited for him to announce the day was over. _Sherlock Holmes? Agatha Christie_? Idly, he craned to see the page. _Neither_. The narrow, irregular lines indicated poetry, not prose.

Foyle wondered if it was a gift from his son. Sam had not, in the past few years, shown any indications that reading poetry was her idea of an entertaining afternoon.

"Good book?" he asked casually.

Sam looked up. "I'm not altogether sure," she said ruefully. "A bit over my head, I'm afraid. _Some_ of it is quite nice." She flipped back a page and read, stiltedly, "_Ash on an old man's sleeve is all the ash the burnt roses leave. Dust in the air suspended marks the place where a story ended_. It's awfully sad. Is it about the Blitz, do you think?"

"Or any war," Foyle said.

"And then there's stuff about _nettles_ which I don't follow _at all_." She frowned at the page. "Why don't poets just _say _what they _mean_ to say? I mean, can you imagine what a report written by a poet would be like?"

"Depends," Foyle said, glancing back at the page in front of him, "on whether or not the poet could spell 'proceed'."

Before he could frame a further tactful enquiry on the origin of the book, his train of thought was interrupted by the shrill tone of the telephone.

He set down his pen and lifted the receiver, identifying himself.

"Mr Foyle." A familiar voice, cool and dry and slightly tinny with the distance of the telephone line.

"Miss Pierce," Foyle said. Sam looked up from the book again. He raised an eyebrow and gestured to the door, and she nodded, and got up to close it.

Of course, she closed it with herself on the _inside_ and returned to her chair to watch him with an air of alert expectation.

"I have a problem, Mr Foyle," Hilda Pierce said.

"Have you." Foyle said, deliberately noncommittal. "Well, I wish you all the best resolving it. We're rather busy here at the moment so -"

"A murder," she said as if he hadn't spoken.

"Have you reported it to the police?" he inquired politely.

"We have," she said, surprising him. "To little end. As could be expected."

"Expected because …?"

"Because this death occurred on the ground of Hill House," Miss Pierce said, "and was almost certainly committed by someone resident here. I would be disappointed if they had not covered their tracks thoroughly. Inconvenient as it is on this occasion."

"_Inconvenient_," Foyle said. "I can see that it might be."

"Need I remind you, Mr Foyle, of the possibilities beyond simple domestic murder which a violent death here raises?"

"No, you needn't," Foyle said. "But I'm still not sure what this has to do with _me_."

"Don't play games with me, Mr Foyle, I'm not in the mood," Miss Pierce said flatly. "Only an exceptionally stupid man would fail to realize that we require your _particular _expertise to resolve this matter."

"Resolve it precisely how, exactly?" Foyle asked. "Make an arrest? Or are you anticipating an unfortunate accident that will happily eliminate the need for an embarrassing trial?"

"If it's a criminal matter, it will be left in your hands," Miss Pierce assured him. "If there are _wider_ implications, other authorities will of course be involved."

"I … _see_." Foyle said.

"So you'll come?"

"We-ell," Foyle said. "We are _rather _busy here at the moment."

"If you need me to give you a speech about how much your country needs you," Miss Pierce said dryly, "you can take it as read. If what I fear is true, Mr Foyle, the very heart of our efforts could be compromised - and more disturbingly, compromised in a way that _I_ have had no inkling of until now." She paused, and Foyle could tell how hard that admission was for her to make. "Lives are at stake."

"Aren't they always, when it comes to murder?" Foyle said mildly. "I presume you've cleared this with the Chief Constable and the AC?"

"Of course."

"Ri-ight. Then I have a couple of conditions."

"Conditions?" Miss Pierce said, a hint of amusement in her voice.

"Yes, if you want my help, I have _conditions_," Foyle said, still mild.

"Your driver," she said.

"Ye-es, and I won't be staying at Hill House. Doubt it would be conducive to sound sleep."

"Agreed," Miss Pierce said. "I'll arrange rooms at the local pub."

"Don't worry," Foyle said. "I'll make my own arrangements. And I may have other stipulations once I've seen what we're up against."

"Within reason," Miss Pierce said warningly.

"Within reason," Foyle agreed, and rang off. He looked up. "Sam."

"Yes, sir?"

"Think your uncle might have room for a couple of house guests?"

She grinned. "He'd be delighted. When do we leave?"

"In the morning," Foyle said. "Give him a call, why don't you. And tell Milner I need to see him."

Sam bounced to her feet. "Is it a murder, sir? Or a spy ring?"

"We-ell," Foyle said. "Could be six of one and half-a-dozen of the other at this point."

She beamed. "As good as Christmas, sir!"

"Perhaps not _quite_," Foyle said, but he was talking to himself. In the hall, he could hear Sam calling to Milner.

With a sigh, he pulled the files in his in-tray to the center of his desk and turned his mind to the delegation of the operations of the Hastings Constabulary.

.

.

.

* * *

A/N: All chapter titles are from "Little Gidding", which is of course the poem Sam is reading, although I believe at the time of this story the poem had only been published in a magazine, not book form.


	2. The Constitution of Silence

"Sir, do you mind if we stop for a moment?" Sam asked. "Only we've just passed Wilson's and there's hardly any queue."

"Go ahead," Foyle said.

Sam pulled up. "If you've got your book, sir, I could collect yours as well. It's always a blasted nuisance trying to change registration for less than a week's travel and if there's a queue tomorrow we might not have time."

"I don't, I'm afraid," Foyle said.

"Well, if you bring your fishing rod," Sam said cheerfully as she got out, "I'm sure Uncle Aubrey won't mind in the _least._ Won't be long, sir!"

Foyle watched her cross the road to Wilson's Grocers, and let his thoughts return to Miss Pierce and Hill House. They recruited from a wide cross-section of society, including from the criminal classes. Most, Foyle was sure, were truly devoted to the idea of serving their country - he had seen too many young men who he'd arrested in the past volunteer for the British Expeditionary Force without hesitation to believe patriotic bravery was incompatible with a criminal history.

_Most doesn't mean __**all**_.

Although during his last visit to Hill House, it had been one of the teachers, not one of the students, who had been the greatest danger. Foyle made a mental note to get the details of Maccoby/Mason's replacement and any other new staff from Hilda Pierce when they arrived. He had little confidence that any similar request for information about the _students_ would receive co-operation.

He was still turning _that _problem over in his head when Sam returned to the car. He could see the green edge of her ration book as she tucked it into her pocket.

She put her rations in the back seat and got in behind the wheel, beaming.

"Look at this, sir," she said. In one gloved hand, she held out to him an orange. "How long since you've seen one of these?"

"Oh, months," Foyle said honestly.

"Want a sniff ?" Sam said. "Go on. It's heavenly!"

He accepted the orange and held it under his nose, inhaling the citrus scent. Something tickled his memory as the orange's sharp smell tickled his nose. _A knife-thin woman with a bandage on her cheek, leaning against the jamb of the door, saying "They had oranges_ …" _in a voice that mixed the vowels of Cornwall and the slurred consonants of France … _

Sam started the car. "Did Miss Pierce tell you anything else, sir?"

Foyle turned the orange between his fingers. "Not so you'd notice, no."

"Well, we'll see when we get there," she said confidently.

"Might be best if you keep your distance from Hill House," Foyle said mildly. _They had oranges, but only …_

"Sir!" Sam's voice was outraged, although her focus on the road didn't waver.

"We-ell, we don't know what we're up against, do we," Foyle said. "Could be valuable information in Levenham. There was last time."

"Oh, I see," Sam said. "Of course. I shall quiz Uncle Aubrey mercilessly and keep my ear to the ground."

"I knew I could rely on you," Foyle said. The words were on the edge of his memory. _They had oranges, but only for children and …_ It was Jen Pawley he could remember, leaning against the frame of the door between his kitchen and his dining room, watching him make tea. She had been joking, half-flirting with him - not, he very well knew, as a woman flirts with a man but as a trained professional probes for weakness.

It was Hill House that had brought her to mind, no doubt. _Hill House, and something she said about oranges_ …

"Early start tomorrow, sir?" Sam asked, stopping the car across from his house.

"Yes," Foyle said, opening his door. "Best get as much of a jump on the day as we can."

"It'll be light enough to see the road by quarter to eight," Sam said.

"See you at eight, then." He tossed her back the orange and got out of the car.

She drove away along the street. Foyle crossed to his front steps and then, as clearly as if she had stepped up behind him and murmured in his ear, he heard Jen Pawley's low voice. _I was tempted to plead my belly_.

_They had oranges. But only for children and women enceinte._

He missed the first step and caught himself with an effort.

_Oh dear god._

_Oh, Sam._

_._

_._

_._

* * *

A/N: The ration book issued to pregnant women was a distinctive green.


	3. The End Is Where We Start From

_ Friday 5 February 1943 _

_… __and as usual I find myself at a loss to understand why you can't use the bloody telephone occasionally. For the next few days you can reach me at the vicarage in Levenham - and Sam, incidentally. I noticed you've been inflicting your incomprehensible modern poets on her. Glad you two seem to have patched things up but Auden, really? _

* * *

Foyle frowned out the window of the car at the countryside flicking past them, chewing the inside of his cheek furiously. Sam had arrived promptly at eight that morning while he'd still been trying to frame a tactful but unmistakable inquiry for the last lines of his letter to Andrew, and he'd had to abandon it as a bad job and simply sign off.

What he'd wanted to write, what he might well have _said_ if Andrew had been there, was _You thoughtless young imbecile, did you think I gave you all those fatherly lectures about precautions for my __**own**__ benefit? You'll marry her, __**if**__ she'll have you, and you'll make a damn sight better husband and father than you did beau or God have mercy on you because __**I'll**__ have none._

It was the only possible explanation. Andrew had been in Hastings at Christmas, two days of leave before he hitched a ride on a plane the ATA was ferrying north; Foyle himself, _god help me_, had been responsible for Sam and Andrew meeting again. Andrew had an easy charm he very well knew how to use and Sam had a soft spot for him. Foyle really wished he could believe his son wouldn't take advantage of that.

_But I can't._

He'd considered, and rejected, alternatives: Sam was too cautious to have allowed any liberties from a more recent acquaintance and her declaration before Christmas that she wasn't seeing anyone had had the ring of truth. She'd have told him if she'd been attacked, _and I'd have known something was wrong whether she said anything or not_.

No. It was his son, his irresponsible, reckless, _cad_ of a son who had put Sam in this position.

_Damn it, Andrew. Did you have to be __**quite**__ so much a chip off the old block? _

He cleared his throat. "You're, ah … been feeling all right, Sam?"

"Oh, yes, sir, tickety boo," she said cheerfully.

"Ri-ight. That's good, then." He studied her out of the corner of his eye.

"Absolutely ravenous of course," Sam said, "but when am I not?"

Foyle frowned harder. "Miss breakfast?"

"Never! But it does sort of hardly touch the sides. And I could _quite_ cheerfully never eat another slice of national loaf."

"I know what you mean," Foyle said with some feeling, and Sam laughed. "We-ell, your uncle might be able to recommend a fishing spot. Might even have time to try my luck today."

"Gosh, sir, that would be super!" Sam said enthusiastically. "I'll ask him. You could teach _me, _sir. We'd catch twice as many!"

"Ye-es, _well_," Foyle said dryly, "it's rather important when fishing not to _talk_. Fish have very good hearing."

"Oh." She drove in silence for a moment. "How was that, sir?"

"Hmm? How was what?" Foyle asked.

"The not talking. How was it?"

He looked out the window to hide a smile. "Very good," he said. "Keep practicing, you might get the hang of it."

"Roger, sir!"

She practiced quite successfully for several more miles - in fact it was Foyle himself who broke the silence. "Heard from Andrew lately?"

"How did you - _oh_, the poetry," Sam said. She grinned ruefully. "It _is_ rather more his cup of tea than mine. Yes, he sent it to me."

"Forgiven him, then?" When she hesitated, he added quickly: "Not my business, of course. Tell me to keep my nose out if you like."

"It is _sort _of your business, sir," Sam said. "He's your son, and I work with you. _For _you, I mean. It's just that it's not as simple as that. I do understand how it all happened. It's the war, isn't it? And he was nice about it and all that. I don't hold a grudge."

Foyle could almost see the word _but_ hanging on her lips. "He'd deserve it if you did," he said.

She laughed. "I have moments of thinking much the same," she admitted. "And sometimes I forget all about it. I suppose that's forgiving him, isn't it? So I daresay I have, in _patches _at least."

Foyle took his hat off and studied the brim. "See him recently?" he asked casually.

"Not since Christmas," Sam said. "Has he been back?"

"Not as far as _I_ know," Foyle said.

"Perhaps he'll get leave again soon," she said cheerfully, and leaned forward to peer through the windshield. "I think we're here, sir. Aren't we?"

"We are," Foyle said, seeing the gates of Hill House ahead. "Now, listen, Sam, be careful, d'you hear? Keep your ear to the ground but don't go poking around. There's been one murder already."

"Don't worry, sir," she said, drawing the car to a stop. "Everyone around here still sees me as a skinny ten-year-old scrumping apples. It's as good as being invisible!"

Foyle reflected that she was probably right, but warned again, "No risks!" as he got out of the car.

"Wilco!" she called brightly, turning the car towards Levenham.

Foyle jogged up the steps, unsurprised when Hilda Pierce emerged from the front door as he reached the top. _Probably had us under observation for the last few miles at least._

"Mr Foyle," she said, extending the hand not holding her cane.

He took it. "Miss Pierce. I wish I could say it was a pleasure."

Her lips quirked. "Likewise," she said dryly. "I presume you'd like to see the scene of the crime?"

"I would," Foyle said. "But I'd like a little more information about what happened, for starters. The victim was …?"

"Known here as Axel Brink," Miss Pierce said. "A … _veteran._" She turned and led the way inside, cane tapping on the parquet floor. "He'd served with some distinction, but he was no longer fit for active duty."

Foyle walked beside her. "Was he injured?"

"Not physically," Miss Pierce said. She opened the door to her office and closed it once Foyle had followed her through. "The work our agents do is demanding. Mr Brink had reached his limits."

She seated herself behind her desk and indicated a chair for Foyle with a stab of her cane.

He took off his hat and coat, tossed them on the indicated chair, and strolled to the window. "So he became an instructor?"

"Of a sort," Miss Pierce said. "He was competent, but not expert, in the skills we teach here. However, his recent experience was invaluable. Much has changed in Europe. There are many ways to betray yourself as a stranger, even in a country you were once familiar with. Small things, but they can be deadly."

"I'm sure," Foyle said.

Miss Pierce studied him. "While you are here, you will no doubt meet Miss Jean Marcus," she said.

"And who is she?" Foyle asked, turning from his contemplation of the view.

"Another of our 'instructors of a sort'. I single her out because you may find her familiar, although the _name _is not."

"I see," Foyle said.

Miss Pierce inclined her head. "You should also know that Mr Brink's tenure here was coming to an end. He was not … _recovering_ as I had hoped. The day before he died, I had told him that he was to be given medical leave. There are _facilities_ where appropriate care can be given in a secure environment."

"Psychiatric facilities?" Foyle asked, and she nodded slightly. "Was this widely known?"

"I don't know if Mr Brink mentioned it to anyone," she said. "I doubt it. I certainly didn't. Why?"

"We-ell," Foyle said, "if the motive was to get rid of him, why not wait a few days until he simply left? On the other hand, if only his _death _would serve the purpose, then the killer might have known he or she was on a timetable. It would be useful to know who else knew he was due to leave, either way."

Miss Pierce inclined her head. "I will see what can be learned."

Foyle wandered casually across the room, to a large pin-board on the wall beside the desk. Row upon row of photographs, all composed in the manner of identity cards, marched across it. He recognized some faces from his last visit, the instructors at the time, and noted that they were fastened to the board with green pins, while the row of younger faces below were secured with yellow ones. _Students._ "How did he die?"

"He was shot," Miss Pierce said. "When he did not come down to breakfast, one of the housekeeping staff - Mary Bishop - went to his room. The door was locked - we later found the key inside."

"_Where _inside?" Foyle interrupted, turning.

"In the drawer of his dresser," Miss Pierce said. She waited, but when he said nothing further, went on: "Mary knocked, received no answer. She reported the matter to me, and we raised a discreet search of the house and grounds. When that was fruitless, I used the master key to open Mr Brink's door, and we found him, shot through the head."

"And the gun?" he asked.

"No sign of it."

"What time was that?" Foyle took a few steps to the side, to study the map on the wall beside the pin board. It was immediately recognizable as Hill House. Neat scraps of paper with tidily handwritten names were pinned to different rooms, again with color-coded pins.

"Nine eighteen precisely," Miss Pierce said.

He located Axel Brink's room, and the dining room. "And what time is breakfast?"

"Seven."

"I see," Foyle said. "What sort of gun was it?"

"A pistol. That was my impression, and the MO also agreed."

"And the body is … ?"

"The police removed it to the coroner's morgue."

"Ri-ight," Foyle said. "Does the room have a window?"

"Yes," Miss Pierce said. "And yes, it was open. But I doubt the murderer left through it."

"Or shot Mr Brink through it?" Foyle suggested.

"I doubt that too," Miss Pierce said. "It's on the third floor. There's no suitable vantage point - although I'm sure you'll want to confirm that for yourself."

"I will, thank you," he said. "Other bedrooms on that floor?"

Her eyes moved to the map, an eyebrow lifted. "Several. I have a list for you."

"No-one … heard a gunshot?"

"We all heard a number of gunshots last night," Miss Pierce said. "Night training on the range."

"I see. About what time?"

"From two until four."

"And who knew that was planned?"

"Everyone," Miss Pierce said. "At least, it was posted on the class schedule."

"Ri-ight," Foyle said.

"You think that was when he was killed?"

Foyle raised his eyebrows. "Seems possible, doesn't it? Who else has access to the master keys?"

"From time to time the instructors have them, for …" She paused, and then said delicately, "_Particular _training exercises."

"Any of those last night?"

"No."

"I'll need a list of everyone who has had access to those keys," he said. "I presume you teach key copying here."

"We teach the principles of making a mold," Miss Pierce said. "Not of casting from it."

"But once a mold is made," Foyle pointed out, "a visit to a less-than-scrupulous locksmith takes care of the rest. And of course there are any number of people here who could, no doubt, _lock _a door without a key as easily as _unlocking_ it."

"Yes," Miss Pierce said.

He moved back to the window. "Who disliked him?"

"Enough to kill him?"

"That bar can be surprising low for some people," Foyle said.

"Yes," Miss Pierce said. "Well. There are always _tensions_. This is not a holiday camp and Mr Brink was forthright in expressing his opinions."

"I'll need a list of those, then, as well."

"You'll have it," Miss Pierce said.

"And what makes you think this might be … mmm, _enemy action_?" Foyle asked.

"Isn't that obvious?" she asked. "You are well aware of what we do here."

"Well, yes," Foyle said. "But I should think there are other, more effective targets to hamstring your operations? Yourself? Wintringham? Why Axel Brink? What made _him_ worth the risk?"

"He had the most recent field experience," Miss Pierce said. "A valuable resource."

Foyle inclined his head. "Perhaps. But I'll also need more details of his experience overseas."

"I'm afraid not," Miss Pierce said. "That is highly classified."

"It may be," Foyle said, "but if it's the reason he was killed, I can't find your killer without the information."

Miss Pierce considered. "If it becomes necessary," she said finally, "I'll see what can be arranged."

"Thank you," Foyle said. "And now I'd like to see Mr Brink's room?"

"Of course," Miss Pierce said. She pressed a button on the telephone on her desk. "I'll have Mary Bishop show you up. I'm sure you have questions for her."

"I do," Foyle said.

She paused, gaze on the pin board, on its gallery of patriots and suspects. "Axel Brink was a dedicated and courageous agent," she said, and added surprisingly, "I think you might have liked him, at least, the man he was before the war. It's a pity you'll only see the way his life ended."

"We-ell," Foyle said. "I'm rather used to that, y'know? In murder, the end is usually where we start from."

As the door opened, he picked up his coat and hat. A young woman entered.

"Mary," Miss Pierce said. "This is Mr Foyle. Please show him Mr Brink's room, and answer any questions he has."

"Yes'm," Mary Bishop said. "This way, if you please, sir."

Foyle followed her out.

.

.

.

* * *

A/N: The 'national loaf' was a wholemeal loaf fortified with vitamins and minerals. Due to shortages of white flour, the national loaf was the only kind of bread available. It was not popular.


	4. Taken From The Defeated

Mary Bishop, a small, fair young woman, led Foyle up to the third floor. He noticed that she kept her hands bundled in her apron as she walked, and when she unlocked the door for him he saw why: the knuckles were cracked and raw, the skin on her fingers peeling.

She pushed the door open and stood aside, eyes modestly lowered.

"Thank you," Foyle said. "Have you worked here long, Miss Bishop?"

"Just a month, sir," she said, with a strong North Country burr.

Foyle surveyed Axel Brink's room from the doorway. The local police had removed the body and, he surmised from the half-open drawers on the dresser and the disarray of the papers on the desk, searched the room. "Like it?"

"Yes, sir." She bobbed a little half-curtsy as she said it, reflecting, Foyle thought, the anomalous social position of the policeman: neither tradesman nor gentleman.

Foyle raised an eyebrow at her. "Why?"

"Why, sir?" She opened and closed her mouth a few times, looking at him, Foyle thought, rather as if he were a school-teacher who'd asked her a difficult mathematical problem or to recite an obscure poem.

"Why do you like it here?" he prompted, stepping through the doorway and carefully around the bloodstain on the floor.

"They're very brave," Mary said. "The people here. It's an honor, sir, to help, even if it's just making sure they have clean sheets."

"Hard work, though, I imagine," Foyle said.

"I'm no' afraid of a little work," she said promptly. "I started in service at Northringham House when I was fourteen and there's no one there won't tell you I'll work from can to can't."

"I don't doubt it," Foyle said. "Were you with Miss Pierce when she found Mr Brink?"

"I was, sir." She came a little into the room, and, unasked, pointed to the floor. "His feet were near the bed, about two feet, a little more, from the bedside table, quite close the edge of the bed, and his head, well …"

"Where the bloodstain is," Foyle said. He took another step, positioning himself where she'd indicated. "Here?"

"Yes, sir."

He scanned the walls for a bullet hole, or the sign that one had been dug out by the investigating police. "How tall was Mr Brink?"

"Tall, sir, I'd say six foot one in shoes. And he was wearing shoes when we found him. All dressed, he was."

"I see," Foyle said. _If he was shot during the night training exercise, what was he doing fully dressed at that time of night? And if he was shot earlier or later, the killer must have used a Maxim or something similar. _Adjusting for Brink's height, he spotted the paler wood on the door-frame where a bullet had been gouged out. _The gun must have been fired from … _He turned. There were only a few feet between where he stood and the desk beneath the window. _The killer was by the desk._ The angle was wrong for the shot to have come through the window, but Foyle crossed to it anyway, and looked out. Miss Pierce had been right: there was no tree or building both high enough and near enough to make a pistol shot possible, even with extraordinary marksmanship. He made a mental note to make sure the wound and the bullet were consistent with a revolver and not, perhaps, a revolver bullet in a rifle. "Why did you come up here, Miss Bishop?"

"Sir?" she asked. "Miss Pierce asked me to."

"Not today," he clarified, stirring the papers on the desk with one finger. "Yesterday morning, when Mr Brink didn't appear at breakfast."

"Oh, I see. Well, he was … I was worried about him, sir, that's the god's honest truth. He wasn't a very happy man, truth be told, and I was right afeared he might do some harm to himself." She twisted her hands in her apron. "Never thought it would be something like this, sir. He was a nice man, a bit sharp sometimes but never meant nothing by it, and never to the staff, sir. A real gentleman, he was."

The papers revealed nothing - a couple of Ministry of Food leaflets, a draft in French of what appeared to be a propaganda pamphlet … _Miss Pierce no doubt removed anything sensitive before the police were even called._ He looked in the bedside table's drawer, touched an oil-stain with his forefinger. "Why didn't you open the door straight away?"

"Sir?"

Foyle turned to look at her. "If you thought he might have harmed himself, why didn't you open the door straight away?" he repeated.

"I don't have the key, sir."

"Miss Pierce did," Foyle observed.

"She does, sir," Mary a little nervously. "She has all the keys."

"So?"

"I can't rightly say, sir," Mary said. "Only Miss Pierce said we had better find him, and not raise a fuss about it, and I should be sure he wasn't in any of the general places in the house, the kitchen or the library or so on, and she would have him found if he was on the grounds. And he wasn't, sir, so I went back to her office and waited and when she came back she said we had better open his room and I should come with her."

"Ri-ght_," _Foyle said. "Did Miss Pierce remove anything else from the room before the police arrived? Besides the papers from the desk?"

"No, sir."

"What about the gun?" Foyle asked. "The one he kept in the beside drawer, the one that left the oil-stain. Did Miss Pierce take that? Or you?"

"No, sir," Mary said. She hesitated, and then admitted: "I know the one you mean, sir, I've seen it. It's one of them Nazi guns."

"A Luger," Foyle said.

"If that's what they're called. I looked straight away when … when we found him. I expected to see it in his hand, when we saw what had happened, and when I didn't, I went and looked in the drawer, I don't know why. And the gun was gone."

"Thank you," Foyle said."Know where he got it?"

"I asked him once," she said. "Why have such a nasty thing instead of a good British pistol. He said he won it fair and square."

Foyle nodded thoughtfully. "Anything else you can tell me about Mr Brink?"

"No, sir," she said. "I just clean, sir, and laundry."

"Of course," Foyle said. "If anything occurs to you, though …"

She bobbed another half-curtsy. "I'll tell you, sir, or Miss Pierce, on my honor."

Foyle inclined his head. "_Thank_ you. And now, if you could show me a telephone I could use …?"

"Of course, sir," she said, and led the way back downstairs.

_ ._

_._

_._

* * *

A/N: The first silencers were made by Hiram Maxim, and just as tissues are often called Kleenex, silencers were often called 'Maxims' in the first decades of the 20th century.


	5. To Arrive Where We Started

_Friday 5 February 1943_

_It does rather give me the pip when Mr F decides something is going to be Too Unpleasant for my Delicate Sensibilities_ _not that he says as much in so many words just 'Better wait with the car, Sam'. I HAVE seen more than ONE db and never once got sick or had to sit down and that's more than one can say about some of the constables, little Billy Prew has gone face-first into more than one murder scene that I know of and Brookie and M just joke about it but there you are._

_Anyway I was stuck sitting in the car for simply HOURS while he talked to the Levenham police and looked at the body in the morgue and all that. BUT! after I read everything twice even the classifieds (people use them for secret messages I've read but I've never found any it's still INTERESTING to think about what happened to people to make them write what they do. Was one today selling a pram and baby clothes never used so sad to think of the story behind it) I decided to go for a walk not far of course so I could still see Mr F if he came out. Old Mrs Kershaw cycled past and stopped to find out what I was doing she's always been a TERRIBLE gossip which is just what's needed when you're INVESTIGATING. She knew ALL ABOUT Hill House well not all about it but an awful lot despite all their super tip-top secrets. I wonder if German spies know that if you want to find anything out you should just ask the nearest old lady? Golly I wonder if OUR spies know that and if I should tell them?_

_Nearly told Mrs K that Careless Talk Costs Lives but did SO want to hear what she had to say and it would have been rather beastly hypocritical for me. Apparently her nephew is with the police like me except more properly and he was one of the ones who went out to get the body and so on and he told Mrs K and she told ME that the db was shot but there was no gun but the window was open and the door was locked so he probably shot himself and threw the gun out the window and it's true people can live for a long time after they've been shot you read about soldiers charging enemy lines even though they've been shot a LOT so it's possible I suppose._

_Maybe I've solved it!_

_Looking back at this I rather think I shouldn't have written some of these things IN CASE this falls into HOSTILE hands or else Miss Pierce. _

_Rather think she is more scary than even Nazis._

_Then think about Mrs C and what I saw that night and feel rather a fool._

* * *

When Foyle emerged from Levenham police station, Sam was sitting behind the wheel of the car with the expression of a police driver who'd been waiting dutifully and alertly since the second he'd left her - which, Foyle knew from experience, generally meant she'd stopped doing whatever it was that she'd been whiling the time away with approximately a second-and-a-half before he'd looked at her.

He got in.

Sam finished chewing whatever she was eating, and swallowed with an effort. "Where to, sir?" she said cheerily.

"The vicarage?" Foyle said. He rested his arm on the seat back as she pulled away from the kerb and glanced into the back seat, spotting the _Chronicle_ where she'd tossed it, _no doubt as she heard the police station door open_.

"Not back to Hill House?" Sam asked. "Have you solved it then, sir?"

"No-ot _quite_ yet," Foyle said, scooping up the paper.

"What would you say if _I_ had?" she asked.

He let the paper rest in his lap and gave her his full attention. "I'd say that was remarkable. Go on."

"_Well_. What if it's a suicide? And he threw the gun away after he shot himself?"

"Unlikely," Foyle said dryly.

"Why, sir? People do it all the time." Sam made the turn into the road that led to the vicarage drive. "Just the other day I read about a gunner in the navy who was so shot to pieces he had to tie himself to his gun and he kept firing for simply _ages_."

"He probably wasn't shot in the _head_," Foyle said.

"No, he was - oh. Was that what happened to the victim, sir? Shot in the head."

"Yes," Foyle said, and then cursed himself for reminding her of the near-miss last December. He turned, and saw her pale. "Sorry, Sam. Pull over."

"I'm fine, sir," she protested.

"Thought I saw a stream back there," Foyle lied. "Pull over so I can check it out."

"Right, sir!" Sam said, stopping with alacrity. "Fish!"

"Fish," Foyle agreed, getting out of the car. "Just be a moment."

He waded through the bracken to a distance he judged reasonably convincing and stopped. There was silence behind him: Sam wasn't following.

He would give her a few moments. She was a brave as anyone he knew, including men he'd seen combat with, but he also knew that women in her condition tended to be more emotional than they might be usually. With Andrew, Rosalind had -

_Rosalind_ …

Briskly, he shook out the paper and scanned it. Sam had been reading the classifieds, which puzzled him until his gaze fell on the advertisement she must have been reading. _Pram and babyclothes_ … There had been necessary economies, on a policeman's salary, when Andrew was born, but rationing was a challenge they had never had to confront.

It was not the time, with the shadow of fascism covering half the globe, to bring a new life into the world, a world where even _booties _were rationed.

Or perhaps it was the best of all possible times to stake a claim on the future.

"Sir!" Sam called from the road.

Hastily, he shoved the paper in his pocket, and started back towards her. "Here!" he called.

She was standing by the car. "Any luck?" she asked.

"I was mistaken," Foyle said.

"Uncle Aubrey gave me a _few_ leads," Sam said as Foyle reached the car. "I marked them on the map. And he doesn't fish but I borrowed a rod from Mr Judge. I don't know if it's the right sort, though. Fishing seems more _complicated _than I expected."

"Andrew never managed to get the hang of it," Foyle said as he got back in to the car.

"And he reads _poetry_ for fun," Sam said mournfully. "So I suppose I'm _doomed_, sir."

"Don't know 'till you try," Foyle said.

"Very true," Sam said firmly. "Hardly seems like yesterday we were here, does it? Sipping Uncle Aubrey's greengage wine?"

Foyle shuddered. "Don't remind me."

"Did you see anyone we know?" Sam asked. "Up at Hill House?"

"Miss Pierce," Foyle said laconically.

Sam was undeterred "Anyone _else, _sir?"

"This is _not_ a place to ask questions, Sam," Foyle said.

She drove in silence for a moment. "If you don't mind me saying, sir, that's not very helpful."

"Oh, _isn't_ it?" Foyle asked.

She colored a little, but said resolutely: "No. If I'm trying to find out what people in the village might know, I need to know what questions to ask. And what questions _not_ to ask. If you don't want me to be curious about things, you should jolly well tell me if you know them. Sir."

"Mmmhmm," Foyle said.

Her hands tightened on the wheel. "You'd tell Milner, sir. You'd even tell Brookie."

"Well I _wouldn't_," Foyle said. "Not Sergeant Brooke."

"I've worked with you - _for_ you - longer than Brookie. Sir."

"You have," Foyle said. "You are a terrible liar, though, Sam."

"I am not!" she said indignantly. "I've always been honest with you, well, except when there was confidentiality involved."

"Yes, I know," Foyle said. "I mean, you're terrible at lying."

"Oh," Sam said. She drew the car to a halt outside the vicarage. "I'm getting better, though. Aren't I, sir?"

"We-ell, yes," Foyle said, as Sam's Uncle Aubrey approached. "But you still find out much more when you don't have to pretend. Don't you?"

Sam sighed. "I do _try, _sir," she said sadly.

"I know you do," Foyle said quickly. "That's not - look, here's your uncle. We'll talk about it later."


	6. They Return, And Bring Us With Them

_Saturday 6 February 1943_

_I caught a fish! A whopper, too, it didn't half pong when Mr F pulled it out with the net but he said bream do that and the smell would wash off and it did and it was HEAVENLY baked. And Mr F caught two smaller ones so there'll be fried fish for breakfast. _

_Think I shall like fishing. P'raps will have time later after I drive Mr F to HH. Altho' really SHOULD be investigating. Still an Army Marches On Its Stomach and probably a police force too so fishing would be helping of a sort._

* * *

"Just pull over up here, Sam," Foyle said.

Obediently, she drew the car to a stop. "See another stream, sir?"

"No." He turned a little to look at her more directly, pink-cheeked and cheerful, and no doubt happily anticipating a repeat of her previous day's beginner's luck. "Sam, did you mean it when you said you wanted me to tell you more about what's going on here?"

"Of course I did," she said.

"Some of it's _unpleasant_," he warned.

"Murder tends to be, doesn't it?" she returned smartly. "And I'd see and know far worse things if I were a nurse or something. If I were going to go off and nurse wounded men, would you say I shouldn't because it would be _unpleasant_?"

"That is a _bit_ different," Foyle objected.

Sam turned to look straight at him. "Yes, it is. Because in a hospital people are in pain and afraid and maybe dying. At a crime scene all that is already _over_."

He raised an eyebrow. "Been practicing that?"

She flushed slightly. "Just a bit."

"We-ell, you've convinced _me_," Foyle said. He took out the thick buff envelope he'd tucked in the pocket of his coat as they left the vicarage.

"I have?" Sam asked tentatively.

"You have." He held out the envelope. "Read what's in there. Can't let you keep it, but it'll bring you up to date."

"Gosh, sir!" Sam took the envelope and lifted the flap. "You're a brick!"

Foyle leaned against the door, watching her as she took out the collection of pages and photographs he'd selected. Was he making a mistake? He'd left out the two photographs that showed most clearly the ruin a bullet had made of Axel Brink's head but there was still the scene-of-crime shot with the sad huddle of the body and the black pool of blood. Still, Sam was right: young women across the country daily tended far uglier wounds.

She came to the photograph and her nose wrinkled in distaste. "Ugh, poor man," she said. "What was he doing in his room in the daytime?"

"The _photograph_ was taken in the daytime," Foyle said. "It seems likely he was killed during the night."

"Then what was he doing up and dressed?" Sam asked.

"Good question," Foyle said. "Got any others?"

"Could they tell how far away the gun was when he was shot? Isn't it different, the injury I mean, depending on how far away?"

"No-ot _always_," Foyle said. "You can't rely on it, especially if the distance is more than a few feet. But in this case, the gun was less than a foot from his temple, fired at a slight upwards angle."

"And he was …" Sam leafed through the papers. "Six foot and three-quarter inches tall. So you can tell how tall the killer was, can't you?"

"More or less," Foyle said. "Depending on how he or she was holding the gun."

Sam frowned, puzzling over that, and then her face cleared. She stretched out her right arm towards him, first two fingers pointed. "You mean like _this_ or …" She bent her arm a little as if about to shoot an imaginary Axel Brink somewhat closer to her. "Like _this_?"

"Exactly. And Mr Brink may have been bending over, or kneeling."

"This floor plan," Sam said, holding it out. "These X marks are where you think the killer was?" Foyle nodded. "Because of where the bullet went? Wouldn't the bullet have been _lower_ if he'd been kneeling?"

"It would," Foyle agreed.

"And if this scale is right the killer must have had his arm bent quite a lot. It's not a very big room."

"It isn't."

"So you _do_ know how tall he is."

"Or her," Foyle reminded her.

"I don't _think_ so," Sam said. "Because if your arm is bent like _this_ and you fire at someone at only a _slight_ upward angle you'd have to be taller than them, not shorter. She'd be a very tall woman."

"Or one wearing heels. Or standing on the desk chair, or the desk."

"Oh," Sam said. "Yes, that's true. And was it his gun? That shot him?"

"It's consistent with a Luger," Foyle said. "That's all we can be sure of."

"Whoever it was, he wasn't scared of them," Sam said decisively.

"What makes you say that?"

"Well," she said, neatening up the papers and putting them back in the envelope, "if someone comes to one's door, and one doesn't like them, there's no need to let them in, is there? Instead of just sort of standing there holding on to the door ready to shut it in their face."

"True," Foyle said.

"_And_ I think it was someone he expected. That's why he was already up and dressed."

"That's a possibility, yes," Foyle said.

She held the envelope out to him. "But I still don't understand how they got out of the room after locking the door."

"We-ell," Foyle said, tucking the envelope away again, "Supposing this expected visitor was a _regular_ visitor? Regular enough for Brink to have given him - or _her_ - a key?"

"You mean like a lover's quarrel, sir?" Sam asked. "Would he have put on his shoes if _that's_ who he was expecting?"

"Point," Foyle conceded.

"I'm sorry, sir," Sam said ruefully. "I haven't been much help, have I?"

"Disappointing," Foyle agreed gravely. "Looks like I'm going to have to wait until this afternoon for you to solve it."

Sam laughed. "You're teasing me again, sir," she said cheerfully.

"I am," Foyle said. He nodded towards the road ahead. "Fancy trying your hand at a bit of detecting at Hill House today?"

"Gosh, sir, _really_?" she said, throwing the car into gear. "That would be absolutely _super_! What would you like me to do?"

"We-ell, keep your eyes on the road for a start," he said as she trod on the accelerator. "A-and … find your way to the kitchen and try to look hungry?"

Sam gave him a mournful, Oliver-Twist look. "Like this?"

"Perhaps not quite _that_ hungry," Foyle said dryly. "See what the staff have to say. They've all signed the Official Secrets Act so don't expect them to be … _forthcoming _about what goes on. But staff see quite a lot. Who argues, who doesn't, so on."

"Who visits whom in the middle of the night?" Sam suggested.

"Exactly," Foyle said. "But _carefully_. There's another reason for the murder that you didn't mention."

"What's that, sir?" Sam asked as she pulled the car up at Hill House.

"Not _all_ the spies are on our side," Foyle said, and got out of the car.

As Sam went in the direction of the staff entrance, he hoped the warning would make her cautious. _Not_, he thought_, that I am at all convinced by Miss Pierce's theory_. This crime had the feeling of a homicide, not an assassination. The gun was a weapon of convenience, chosen on impulse by a killer who knew it was there, but had not come expecting to kill. It was not impossible that the fatal confrontation had been sparked by Axel Brink discovering a spy in Hill House, but Foyle found it hard to believe that a man who'd survived a mission to occupied Europe would let an enemy agent into his bedroom and then let them get between him and his gun. _No_. Brink could have no suspicion of his own danger.

_And_, Foyle thought as he started up the front steps, _he would have been a hard man to take by surprise_.

Behind him, a woman's light, clear voice, with the rounded vowels of a very good education, called: "Hello! You must be Mr Foyle."

He turned, raising his hat automatically, as Jen - _Jean Marcus_, he reminded himself - abandoned the bicycle she'd been wheeling along and trotted up the steps towards him, hand outstretched. "Good morning," he said, taking it politely. "You have me at a disadvantage, I'm afraid, Miss … ?"

"Marcus," she said promptly. Her handshake was firm, and like her tweed skirt and sensible shoes gave an immediate impression of _country gentlewoman_. Foyle half-expected a couple of dogs to be following her and would not have been surprised if she'd had a shotgun cradled in her other arm. "Miss Pierce said there'd be someone coming about poor Axel and you're the first new face here in simply _weeks_, apart from the fellows yesterday, pimply youths and a positive _grandfather_." Foyle winced slightly, but she ran on without noticing: "It's all very shocking, although when one thinks about it this _is_ a country house and a body in the library is practically _de rigueur_, isn't it?"

_Sam_, Foyle realized. _She's 'doing' Sam. _He was suddenly, furiously angry with her, as if he'd found her rifling through Sam's wardrobe and stealing his driver's paltry collection of ration-book clothes.

Keeping the emotion from his face with an effort, he released her hand. "Were you well acquainted with Mr Brink?"

"As well as with anyone here, which is, rather more than is pleasant and rather less than might be useful under _these_ circumstances," she said. "I made a list, though, of everyone who might have done it. I'll get it for you. And in case you're wondering how to ask, I didn't shoot him, so you can cross _me_ off _your_ list."

"Thank you," Foyle said politely. He indicated the bicycle. "Come from far?"

She gave an exaggerated shudder. "Simply _miles_. Fete Committee. Whole thing will be a _complete _disaster, well, you can imagine, no-one's exactly _awash_ with baked goods or spare clothing at the moment, are they?"

"I imagine not, no," Foyle said.

"Still, we must bat on," she said. "I shall beard cook in her den and see what can be done. I say, I don't suppose you and that smart young woman driver could give me a lift back later on? Save my poor legs and so on. And I could give you my list!"

_And __**completely**__ coincidentally, we could talk privately_, Foyle thought. He gave her a perfunctory smile. "Of course. I'm not sure how long I'll be, but I'll make sure to find you before we go. Oh, you might encounter my driver, Miss Stewart, in the kitchen. I believe she was hoping for something to eat."

"She'll be bally lucky," Jean Marcus said. "Cook is an absolute _dragon_." She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I swear she guards the milk the way Daddy used to guard the Glenlivet. Marks the side of the bottle and _everything_."

"There is, after all, a war on," Foyle said mildly.

His tone made not a dent on Miss Marcus. She gave him a sunny smile. "Blasted Jerry! Must do something about that, hey? Anyway, must dash, don't run away without me, remember!"

She trotted down the steps and picked up her bicycle, gave him a parting wave and wheeled it away.

Foyle watched her out of sight, and then turned, and went into the house.


	7. The Children In The Apple Tree

Miss Pierce had assembled the instructors and the students in the common room. It gave the gathering the feeling of a general meeting in a small public school, emphasized by the way the students grouped together at one end of the room, talking and joking among themselves, keeping a wary distance from the older men and women who were there to teach and test them.

Major Stafford greeted Foyle with a nod. Evelyn Cresswell, Foyle noted with some amusement, had apparently decided to pretend they had never met. He wondered what _she_ taught. _Techniques of disguise, perhaps_? Next to her, an elderly man with heavily-stained teeth was laboriously filling a pipe with hands crippled by arthritis.

Foyle stopped next to him. "Mr Carey?"

Liam Carey looked up from his pipe, and his face split in an enormous brown grin. "Mister Foyle!" He began to heave himself to his feet.

"No, please," Foyle said, "don't get up. How have you been? It must have been … ten years?"

"Nine years, eight months," Carey said. He seized Foyle's offered hand and pumped it enthusiastically. "Well, I never! This is Detective Foyle, Evie. Damn fine bobby. Collared me, what, three times?"

"Four, I think," Foyle said. _Twice for housebreaking, once for 'going prepared', once for possession of stolen. Yes, four. _"I take it you teach locks and so forth?"

Carey held up his twisted hands. "Those who can, do," he said. "Those who can't, teach other buggers to do."

Foyle smiled. "Glad to see your skills going to a good cause," he said. "Finally."

"Aye," Carey said, tucking his pipe into the corner of his mouth. "Not that these young buggers can unlock a wet paper bag, mostly." He took the pipe out of his mouth and suddenly gave a stentorian bellow: "Isn't that right, Simanek! Five shameful minutes it took you today and it was only a basic Yale!"

At the other end of the room, one of the young men ducked his blond head in embarrassment. The woman next to him giggled, and then quickly covered her mouth with her hand and looked meek when Carey turned his glare on her.

The door banged open, and Lt Col James Wintringham strode in. "_If_ we're going to have to put up with this, let's do get on with it, shall we?"

"Terribly sorry a murder investigation has interfered with your morning," Foyle said politely. "_If_ you're in a terrible hurry, I _could _arrest someone at random, if you'd like?"

"Not me," Carey said promptly. "I've done my quota."

Hilda Pierce swept into the room behind Wintringham. "Do sit down, James," she said. "Let's not tempt Mr Foyle beyond his virtue."

Wintringham looked around. Foyle noted that, like many handsome, fair young men, he'd begun to age rapidly, veins beginning to show beneath his eyes. "Marcus isn't here," he said.

At the other end of the room, a shadow by the curtains stirred and became a woman in a tweed skirt. "I am," Jean Marcus said.

"Why are you skulking down there?" Wintringham demanded peevishly.

"I was being _covert_," she said demurely, and took a seat apart from both students and staff to a ripple of laughter. Turning, Foyle surprised a look of real hatred on Wintringham's face. He looked at Hilda Pierce, and saw that she, too, was looking at Wintringham.

And she did not look surprised by what she saw.

Foyle filed _that _away for consideration. "Ri-ight," he said, "well. I know you've all already given statements to the local police, but I was hoping to learn a little more from you about Mr Brink."

"I didn't kill him," Carey said promptly, and wheezed with laughter.

"Know who did?" Foyle asked swiftly.

Carey didn't look at anyone as he shook his head, trying to get his breath past a fit of coughing; and as far as Foyle could see, there were no betraying glances or flinches anywhere else in the room. _Worth a shot_.

"He gave language and culture classes," the young man Carey had called Simanek volunteered, his voice carrying traces of an East European accent. "Outside that … he was by himself, much of the time."

"A lone wolf," Stafford said. "Not a _joiner_."

"Neither are you," Evelyn Cresswell said with a sidelong glance.

"Just stating a fact," Stafford said, without either heat or apology.

"He had trouble with his temper," the young woman beside Simanek said, her German accent heavy. "You say … hot-headed, I think."

"More than _hot-headed_," Wintringham said. "Bloody loose cannon."

"How so?" Foyle asked.

"Oh, you know the sort," Wintringham said dismissively. "Thought he knew better than anyone, couldn't stand different opinions, couldn't take orders."

"Any … in particular?" Foyle asked.

There was a silence, not a long one. "He had ideas above his rank," Wintringham said finally.

"Whereas you have rank above your ideas," Jean Marcus shot back.

"Please, Miss Marcus," Wintringham said, "do give us the benefit of your _brilliant_ insights into our strategic priorities. _Again_."

She was on her feet, a single sharp movement, color high, face hard. Almost on the instant, Miss Pierce's cane came down on the floor.

"Could we _concentrate _on Mr Brink?" she said. "And perhaps save arcane technical disputes for more appropriate forums?"

"Yes, yes, let's get on with it," Wintringham said irritably.

Jean Marcus stayed on her feet. "As _you know_, Miss Pierce," she said, "I have nothing to contribute to any discussion of Mr Brink here. Do please excuse me."

Without waiting for an answer, she strode to the door. It closed behind her just short of a slam.

"_Well_," Wintringham said. "I do apologize for that, Mr Foyle. Miss Marcus is a tad over-emotional."

"No need to apologize," Foyle said politely. "Not on Miss Marcus's behalf. I take it you'd argued with Mr Brink, then?"

"_Everyone _had argued with Axel," Wintringham said.

"That is unfortunately almost true," Miss Pierce said. "_I_ certainly had. I believe he'd had words with a number of our students. And Major Stafford."

Stafford nodded, and Evelyn Cresswell volunteered: "He had a bit of a go at me as well, and honestly, I still don't know why."

"What happened?" Foyle asked her.

"I teach makeup," she said. "Disguises, yes, but also - you know it's almost impossible to get powder or lipstick these days, let alone in Europe. It can be important for female agents to look their best, and there are all sorts of little tricks - beetroot juice, for example." Foyle nodded to show he understood, and she went on: "He just stormed in one day. He started _shouting_ at me, he called me, a - well, I don't quite like to say." She looked down, as if embarrassed, although Foyle noted that she was not blushing. "He knocked all the things onto the floor and he said some _very_ unpleasant things about the students."

"He called us whores," one of the female students said, a dark-haired young woman who could not have been more than twenty and who had the long face and huge eyes of an El Greco Madonna. She met Foyle's gaze with perfect equanimity. "He called Miss Cresswell a madam, he called Lieutenant Colonel Wintringham a pimp, he smashed things. It was not just make-up," she added. "When a woman goes overseas, she must be aware, it would be disastrous to get 'in the club'. Miss Cresswell educates us on how to avoid this."

Foyle raised an eyebrow. "Apart from abstinence?"

Wintringham muttered "God save us from a provincial policeman's morality!"

The dark-haired girl stood up. "I have a brother serving," she said.

Foyle inclined his head. "I have a son."

"It is the night before an attack," she said. "Knowledge of the enemy's positions will save many lives. Perhaps my brother. Perhaps your son." She held his gaze. "There is a lonely German officer. There is a map. Would I be, as Mr Brink said, a whore, to let that German officer use my body for the chance to see that map?"

"No," Foyle said gently. "You would be … very brave."

She sat down again. "No," she said. "My brother is very brave."

"Did what Mr Brink said make you angry?" Foyle asked.

"It made me _sad_," she said. "We are not supposed to talk about it, but all of us knew that Axel had come back from Europe." Wintringham opened his mouth and she raised a hand. "Please, Colonel. Do you think no-one could hear him screaming in the night? I don't know what happened to him there, but it made him angry, not just with the Germans, but with us. _All _of us, because we were here." She shrugged. "Perhaps with everyone."

"Everyone?" Foyle prompted.

"With the service, with the war, with the politicians," she said. "With the public, with the newspapers, with people who would never know what had happened to him and with people who _did_ know, because they knew. He was often angry. Over nothing. He frightened me, sometimes. Sometimes he made me sad."

"I see," Foyle said, thinking back to the years immediately after the last war, the seemingly senseless acts of violence in streets and homes, the men who had come home with no _visible_ scars.

"He was troubled," Wintringham said. "Unreliable."

"A security risk?" Foyle asked mildly.

"Possibly," Wintringham said. "But I didn't go to his bedroom before breakfast to silence him for the sake of the service, Mr Foyle, if that's what you're thinking."

"I didn't think you did," Foyle said. "For one thing, I'd be surprised he'd have let you in, from what I've heard. Who would he have let in?"

"Me," Major Stafford said, unexpectedly. "We had a drink together, now and again. My own supply. They watch what you drink down here, you know." He shifted in his chair, avoiding Miss Pierce's gaze. "I didn't kill him either."

"Anyone else?"

"He had a woman," the German girl said. "I don't know who. But I heard a woman's voice in his room, more than one time."

"Your room is on the second floor," Miss Pierce observed. "How did you come to hear something in Brink's room on the third?"

The girl shrugged. Her gaze flicked to Evelyn Cresswell, and away again.

_Well_, Foyle thought. _And if voices in Axel Brink's room could be overheard from Miss Cresswell's … perhaps the reverse is also true._

It was the first trace of a motive he'd come across, but this was not the time or place to push for the truth.

Instead, he asked: "Could you make out anything she said? Or that he said to her?"

The girl shook her head. "No. Just - they were talking, back and forth." She paused, frowning, then shook her head. "I couldn't hear anything, really."

"What were you going to say?" Foyle asked.

"I …" she said, and stopped. "I don't know why, exactly, but I had the impression they were speaking _French_. But I don't know why. I just thought _ah-ha, they are practicing their French._"

"Thank you," Foyle said. _Languages have their own rhythm. _Even if she had not picked up any of the words, he didn't doubt her impression had been correct. He glanced at Miss Pierce, and received a slight nod in return. Without question, he'd have a list of all women fluent in French on the grounds by the end of the day.

"One other thing, Mr Foyle," Evelyn Cresswell said. "I don't remember hearing a woman in his room, speaking French or otherwise. But I did pass his room one night, perhaps two weeks ago?"

"Go on," Foyle said, giving her his full attention.

"There _was_ someone there. The light was on, and I could see … the shadows, under the door, more than one set of feet. No-one was speaking." She paused. "But I could hear … it seems unkind to say it, he's dead. And he _was _brave. But …"

Foyle waited as she folded her hands together, unfolded them and smoothed her skirt over her knees. Finally she took a breath, and looked up at him. "I could hear him crying, Mr Foyle. Crying like the world was ending."

_Or perhaps_, Foyle thought as Miss Pierce dismissed the gathering, _perhaps crying as if, for him, it already had._


	8. Costing Not Less Than Everything

Foyle walked slowly down the front steps to the car, turning over the case in his mind.

He'd managed a few moments in private conversation with Evelyn Cresswell. _I have no alibi_, she'd said frankly. _There was a night exercise on the range, so Zara … didn't come to my room that night. I was alone. _

_I know you think that Zara and I - that I have a motive, if Axel knew. Blackmail, perhaps? But I assure you, Mr Foyle, Miss Pierce would be irritated about fraternizing with a student, but that's all. Nobody cares here, about people … people like me. You can ask her._

Foyle had, and Miss Pierce had confirmed Evelyn's words.

_Still_, he thought. _The war won't last forever. One day Miss Cresswell will need new employment. And she may have family, friends, who she would prefer not know about some aspects of her life. Blackmail is still a possibility._

But there was still the French-speaking woman in Brink's room. _A regular visitor … who might well have her own key._

_Who might well know about his 'won fair and square' Luger. _

_Who might well have the opportunity to take it from that drawer without alarming Brink._

The young woman with the face from El Greco, Anne Overton, was fluent in French. According to Miss Pierce, she was the only one of the female students who could carry on a conversation with any degree of comfort in that language. _Believe me, Mr Foyle_, she'd said dryly, _they're all desperate to impress. If any of the others could do more than order a coffee and a bowl of hamster stew, I __**would**__ know about it._

And Anne had been on the range, Zara, Major Stafford and Simanek had all confirmed it. **_If_**_ the murder had been timed to use the distant gunshots to disguise the sound. _Evelyn Cresswell had reasonable French, but she had been with Zara when the German girl's sharp hearing had picked up the voices through the wall. There were no other female instructors at the moment, apart from …

She was standing beside the car, chatting casually to Sam, the other woman at Hill House who was, Foyle knew for a certainty, completely fluent in French.

_Jen. Jean. Jeanne_.

He raised his hat. "Miss Marcus," he said politely.

"Just making sure you don't _escape_," she said brightly.

"Miss Marcus said you didn't mind if we gave her a lift, sir," Sam said.

"Not at all," Foyle agreed. "Hop in."

"_Super_," Jean said, and tucked herself into the back seat as Foyle got in to the front and Sam slid behind the wheel. "You have no idea how _grateful_ I am for this. I am beginning to loathe that bicycle seat."

"I know what you mean," Sam said with feeling as she started the car. "Where in Levenham can we drop you?"

"I'm just going a few miles down the road, actually." Jean lowered her voice. "Going to check my _snares_."

"_Poaching_?" Sam exclaimed with shocked delight.

"You may as well drop the -" Foyle started to say.

Jean leaned forward and her hand closed hard on his shoulder. "It's not _strictly_ illegal," she said brightly. "So you don't need to feel any _burning_ urge to arrest me, Mr Foyle."

He turned to look at her and, with the hand not gripping his shoulder, she touched her ear, then her lips. _Listeners_, the gesture said. _Careful what you say_.

Foyle nodded slightly to show he'd understood and she let him go. "I have an arrangement with a local farmer," she said. "He's getting on a bit. He lets me trap on his land and I share the furry little bodies with him. We're both getting fat on the deal, although since I have to turn _mine_ over to the kitchen for the whole bally _crew_ at the House, he's getting far fatter than me."

"I've learned how to fish," Sam said. "It's jolly good fun and you get dinner out of it as well."

"You've been fishing _once_," Foyle pointed out.

"And I caught an absolute _whopper_," Sam said.

"Beginner's luck," Foyle said.

"Long may it last, then," Sam said cheerfully.

"You can stop just up here," Jean said.

"We can drive you back, if you like," Sam said, pulling the car to a gentle halt.

"Oh, it's not far." Jean opened the door, and then stopped, as if struck by a sudden thought. "If you'd like to hold on a bit, though, I could probably lose a coney off the end of the brace for you. Trade for the lift."

"Oh, _could_ you?" Sam said. "Rabbit stew …"

Her tone was so filled with longing that Foyle and Jean both laughed. He opened his door as well. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll help."

"_Super_," Jean said, and led the way into the trees.

Foyle paused long enough to catch Sam's gaze and hold his finger to his lips. She nodded, eyes wide.

"Back shortly," he said quietly, and followed Jean.

She was waiting for him a dozen yards from the road, utterly still in the shadow of the trees.

"Not safe to talk in the car?" he asked softly.

"I don't know," she said. The clipped voice was gone, the soft slur of Cornwall and France was back. "Assume it's never safe to talk _anywhere_ that anyone else has had access to. Any building, any vehicle."

"Ri-ight," Foyle said. "And are there rabbits? Or is this a pretense?"

She laughed softly. "And cannot it be both?"

He followed as she picked her way deeper into the trees. "I was surprised, back at Hill House," he said.

"Did Miss Pierce not tell you I would be there?" Jean asked, kneeling and feeling beneath a spreading bramble.

"She did," Foyle said tightly. "I wasn't surprised to see you. I _was_ surprised to learn you were … _unkind._"

She sat back on her heels, the limp corpse of a rabbit in her hand, and looked up at him. "Unkind?"

"Still, we must _bat on_," Foyle said, precise mimicry. " A corpse in the library is absolutely _de rigueur_, don'cha know?" He put his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Sam was kind to you. She risked her _life _for you. She deserves better than caricature, don't you think?"

"Ah," she said softly. She stood, slowly, and ran one hand over the dead rabbit's fur. "It was not … not like that."

"No?" Foyle said.

"No." Turning, she moved a little further on, knelt for another snare. "I … I _panicked, _Mr Foyle."

He tried to make sense of that, a kind of sense that didn't make her a murderer suddenly face-to-face with the police. "When you saw me?"

Jean laughed. "Oh, no, I knew you were coming. No, long ago, Mr Foyle." She freed another dead rabbit. "I was supposed to be Jeanne Valois, here. She's already blown - if one of these young idiots finds themselves in a dark cellar being asked about who they know in our service, telling about Jeanne can't do any harm. I didn't have anything else ready. Then I walked in and saw Axel and …" Jean paused, looking up at him. "He called me _Jeanne_. He knew Jeanne. And I couldn't, I _couldn't_, be Jeanne. I opened my mouth and Jean Marcus came out." She stood up. " You think I'm making fun of her, of your Sam. But I'm _not_. I needed to be someone who was strong and brave and _clean_ and able to walk across that room and shake Axel by the hand and …"

"And Sam is all of those things," Foyle said.

"And Sam is all of those things," she agreed. "And Jeanne Valois was _none_ of them."

After a moment, he held out his hands. She placed the rabbits in them.

"Four more snares," she said.

He followed her along her route. "How," he asked delicately, "how have you been?"

Jean didn't pretend to misunderstand him. "Better than Axel," she said. "Not that _that's_ saying much. I'm terrified they'll send me back. I'm terrified they _won't_ send me back." She shivered, and folded her arms tightly, and then said lightly, the clipped upper-class tones back: "It's rather mucked me about, I'm afraid. If I were a tank our American friends would paint 'FUBAR" on my side and send me for scrap."

"And Axel Brink?"

She shook her head, and knelt again. "Axel wasn't a broken-down tank. Axel was a UXB. You could almost hear the ticking. When I heard that he had died … I wasn't surprised." She looked up at him. "That he was _murdered_, though, that _was_ a surprise."

"I'm looking for a woman," Foyle said, already knowing what the answer would be, "fluent in French, who visited him in his room. Several times."

"That was me," she said matter-of-factly as she got to her feet, adding another rabbit to the ones he held. "I thought perhaps I could … help him, in some way. Or rather, that _Jeanne _could, who is also me. But … " She shrugged.

"I find myself wondering who you _are,_" Foyle said. "When you aren't Jeanne Valois. Or Jean Marcus."

"You _know_," she said.

"Jen Pawley," Foyle said.

"Jen, at least." Another snare, another rabbit; Foyle's arms were beginning to tire.

"Jen," he said. "Who killed Axel Brink, Jen?"

"If you had asked me a week ago," she said, kneeling to another snare, "the most likely murder in Hill House, I would have said it would be myself the victim, and Axel the murderer."

"He hated you that much?" Foyle asked.

"He hated me that much." Instead of giving him the next rabbit, she took one from him, slinging it and the one she'd just retrieved over one shoulder with the aplomb of a game-keeper.

Foyle studied her face. "Did you hate him in return?"

"No," Jen said, and as far as Foyle could judge - _admittedly perhaps not that far given how accomplished a liar everyone who leaves Miss Pierce's "school" has to be_ - she was telling the truth. "I owed him a great deal. I was aware of how much. Ah, empty! I'll have to reset this one, I think."

"Why?" Foyle asked, picking his way through the undergrowth as she checked her last snare. "Why did you owe him?"

"You'll have to ask Miss Pierce," Jen said, not looking up.

"And why did he hate you?"

A last limp corpse joined the others. "You'll have to ask Miss Pierce," she said again.

"And if I'd rather hear your perspective?" Foyle pressed.

She did look at him then, in the fading light. "You'll have to ask Miss Pierce for my 'perspective' too."

"You realize," Foyle said carefully, "this gives you a motive."

"Why? I held no grudge against him."

"Attack is the best form of defense?" Foyle suggested.

Jen laughed softly. "Indeed. But if I had felt myself in real danger from him, there were other options."

"But you thought he might murder you," Foyle said.

"No. I knew he _wanted_ to. But Axel … Axel no longer had it in him to kill anyone." She turned, and began to pick her way back towards the road, tossing back over her shoulder: "Except, perhaps, himself."

.

.

.

* * *

A/N:

The SOE was fairly indifferent to the sexual orientation of those they hired, unusually so for the time.

Hamsters were raised for food in urban occupied France.

Covert listening devices were not advanced enough, in this period, to be placed in cars or even in buildings with any ease.

FUBAR - Fucked Up Beyond All Repair (or Recognition) - originated in the US forces in WWII.


	9. Kneel Where Prayer Has Been Valid

_ Sunday 7 February 1943_

_Lovely lovely rabbit stew for dinner last night. Must admit, thought about it all the way through Uncle Aubrey's sermon, sure God didn't mind after all I was being Thankful For His Bounty_, _wasn't I? All the HH types were there seems very odd to stop doing what they do to go to church but before lunch I was reading that book A sent and for a minute I thought I almost understood why one MIGHT._

_They didn't speak to us and we didn't speak to THEM although Miss P gave Mr F a LOOK as we left. He just raised his hat to her. _

_Lunch soon, then a spot of fishing. _

* * *

Foyle watched Sam from the corner of his eye. She stood very straight in the old clothes she'd borrowed from her uncle, attention utterly focused on her line.

"Miss Marcus had a few things to say yesterday," he said.

"Shh, sir," she said reprovingly. "You'll scare the fish!"

"Oh, well," Foyle said with a smile, "if you'd rather _fish _than discuss the case …"

He watched, amused, as the struggle between her curiosity and her hunger played out on her face. "What did she say?" she asked finally.

"We-ell, not to say anything we mind being overheard in the car or … _anywhere_ inside, for one thing."

She half turned toward him, eyes wide. "Could they _do _that sir? Put some sort of transmitter in the car?"

"Not that _I've _heard," Foyle said. "But if they've worked out a way we probably wouldn't hear about it, would we?"

"No," Sam said. "Golly. Golly, sir! Spying on a policeman, that's a bit rich, isn't it?" She paused. "We should say all sorts of wrong things to confuse them. I saw that in a film. The hero knew that the Germans were listening to his telephone calls so he said he was going to be in different places to where he really _was_."

"Probably best to leave that sort of thing to the experts," Foyle suggested. _And the cinema._

Sam deflated a bit. "S'pose so," she said, and then: "I've got a bite! I've got a bite!" She began to reel in her line.

"Not too fast," Foyle warned her, setting his own line on the bank and picking up the net. "Let it tire itself."

Sam's fish - a nice fat perch, Foyle noted, a continuation of her beginner's luck - occupied them for several moments, and no sooner was it landed than Foyle himself felt a tug on his line. They had the makings of a fine fish supper before there was time again for conversation.

Then, sitting on the bank, he told her what Jen had said about Axel Brink, what he had learned the previous day. Sam contributed what she'd managed to pick up from the staff - not much, but enough to confirm that Brink had been a deeply distressed man, but his outbursts of anger had been directed toward the students and teachers at Hill House, and never at the servants.

"Poor man," Sam said sadly. "Sounds like a sort of, what do you call it? Combat fatigue?"

"Something like," Foyle said.

"It hardly seems fair, to go through - well, whatever he went through. And come back safe. And then be _murdered_ by someone in his own bedroom."

"No." Foyle chewed the inside of his cheek. "No, it doesn't seem fair at all."

"Do you know what _I_ don't understand, sir?" Sam asked. "Apart from who did it? _Why_ take the gun?" She turned to look at him. "If it was _his_ gun. Or even if it wasn't. If it had been found in his hand, from what everyone's saying about him, wouldn't people immediately think he'd shot himself and that would be that?"

"Yes," Foyle said. "It'd be nice to _find_ that gun. Might answer a few questions."

"It could be _anywhere_," Sam said glumly.

"Not quite," Foyle said. "No-one could have left the grounds without Miss Pierce learning about it. And she had the place searched."

"Sir," Sam said uncomfortably. "Miss Marcus left the grounds. At least, she did yesterday. I mean, I don't think _she _did it. But …"

"Yes," Foyle said. "_But_."

"And she admitted being in his room," Sam pointed out. "And she doesn't have an alibi."

"And she may have a motive," Foyle said.

"So does Miss Cresswell, though," Sam said. She tucked her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around them. "Although neither of them have a very _good_ motive."

Foyle tilted his head. "Avoiding disgrace, social censure … people have killed for less."

"People have killed for all _sorts_ of stupid reasons," Sam said. "But do you think _Miss Cresswell_ would kill for a stupid reason? I mean, no-one would really care, even if they _did_ know. There was a mistress at my school like that, _everyone _knew. And quite a few of my friends have aunts who _never married. _People just don't talk about it."

"Mmm," Foyle said. "She might have panicked."

"I suppose so," Sam said. "I'd rather it was _her_ than Miss Marcus. But it doesn't seem enormously likely, to me." She paused. "Could one of the students, or Major Stafford, have snuck away from the training session? It _was_ night."

"Unlikely," Foyle said, "not without being noticed. But not _impossible_. But that's another reason I'd like to find that gun." He settled his hat on his head and stood up. "To see if it had been fitted with a suppressor."

Sam got up as well, and stooped to pick up the bag with their fish. "That would rather open up the window of opportunity - oh."

"Sam?" Foyle asked. He set down his own rod and took her arm. "You alright? Sit down again."

"I'm fine, sir," she said. "I just remembered the open window. Did the MO take that into account when he was determining time of death? How cold was it, that night?"

"He did," Foyle said, letting her go as she seemed steady on her feet. "That's why he couldn't pin-point it to more than sometime between midnight and six in the morning. Depends on _when _the window was opened."

"Right," Sam said. She shouldered her rod and turned toward the car. "Then we'd better find that gun, hadn't we, sir?"


	10. Half-Heard, In The Stillness

"There is a _war_ on, Uncle Aubrey," Sam pointed out, as the vicar followed them to the car, shaking his head over working on a Sunday.

"And what shall it profit a man," Aubrey said, "if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

"I'm not a man," Sam pointed out firmly. "And Mr Foyle's soul is, I'm _quite_ sure, entirely safe from the devil and all his works. _Goodbye_, Uncle. Don't forget to put the fish on to poach if we're not back by half-five!"

She got behind the wheel and shut the driver's door firmly. "_Honestly_," she said.

"I remember when _you_ objected to working on a Sunday," Foyle said with a sidelong glance.

"That was absolutely ages ago, sir," Sam said loftily. "I know better now. Crime doesn't keep banker's hours."

_Absolutely ages._ Less than three years, although he supposed that to someone young enough for three years to be more than half her adult life, that did indeed qualify as _absolutely ages._

And what would the _next_ three years bring?

He glanced at her again, chewing the inside of his cheek. In three years her child would be walking and talking, beginning to show the signs of individual personality. _If hereditary runs true, walking, and talking nineteen-to-the-dozen. _Would the war be over? Or would that child know a world of rationing and air-raid shelters, blacked-out streets and bombs?

Sam interrupted his thoughts. "Here we are, sir," she said, stopping the car. "Perhaps we ought to divide up and cover more ground."

"We-ell," Foyle said, getting out, "if it were just lying around somewhere, one of the MPs would have found it, don't you think?"

She faced him over the roof of the car. "Then what's the plan?"

"I think we ought to look for something that might tell us where the gun might_ be_," Foyle said. "Rather than the gun itself."

"Like what, sir?" Sam asked, puzzled.

"If I knew _that_," Foyle said dryly, "this would be a great deal easier. I'll start under Mr Brink's window. You go inside and work your way down from his room."

"Wilco, sir!" Sam said cheerfully. "Eyes peeled!"

He watched her trot into the house, and made his own way around the building to the side Brink's room had faced. The area had been searched thoroughly already, but by men who were looking for a gun. _And only a gun_.

_And what do I expect to find, that is not a gun?_ Foyle asked himself as he counted windows to identify Brink's. _The marks of a very long ladder that someone climbed to shoot Brink through his window? _

_And the prototype invisibility device that enabled them to do so without a single person noticing?_

There were no usual marks beneath the window, or in the flowerbeds. He'd asked about the roof, only to learn from Major Stafford that the only access was kept heavily locked and padlocked. Foyle had inspected the door himself, and agreed with Stafford's dismissal of the roof as a possibility: although there were no doubt several people in the house -_ Carey_, _for one_ - who could make short work of those locks, even Carey could not have done so without disturbing the rust that caked the bolts or the dust and cobwebs in the hallway that led to the door.

_The gun was fired in the room_. That, he was certain of. It had been less than a foot from Brink's head when the fatal shot was fired and the blood showed that the man had fallen at once and not been moved. _The gun left the room_. Well, it was not there now, so yes, it must have. He, and no doubt Miss Pierce's searchers, had checked all the usual, the unusual, and the extraordinary hiding places. _It left either by the window or the door. _

He studied the area again, deliberately _not_ looking for anything, waiting for something out-of-place to force itself on his attention. The gardens were in bud, but not in bloom, yet, the spring foliage sprinkled with a host of tiny colored dots and one early flower …

_No_. Not an early flower - there was something caught in the shrubbery along the side of the house, a scrap of pale cloth. Foyle picked it out, carefully. It was a heavy fabric, with some sort of coating on one side. _Waterproofing_? It was too small for him to make out the shape of whatever it had been torn from.

He was slipping it into an envelope when, through the open French windows not four feet from him, he heard a door bang open, and slam shut.

"Listen to me, James. _Listen_ to me."

Foyle paused. Manners indicated he should either move away or alert them that they were overheard. Police work, on the other hand, suggested he do neither. The voices came clearly, and although he could not see the speakers he had no trouble identifying Colonel Wintringham and Miss Pierce.

"You were the one so set against involving him last time," Wintringham said.

"He involved _himself_ last time," Miss Pierce said. "As a result of your high-handed -"

"It worked."

"_Worked_," Miss Pierce said with genteel scorn. "It was a disaster that put this entire organization in peril. Foyle could have destroyed us, and you should have no doubt, he _wanted_ to."

"I doubt that," Wintringham said. "Since he _obviously _didn't."

"_I_ persuaded him," Miss Pierce said, and Wintringham laughed.

"Your charms are so extensive," he said patronizingly. "If he's so dangerous, why did you want him here _this _time?"

"Because a murderer on the loose in this facility is somewhat _more _dangerous, wouldn't you say?"

"We hardly need DCS Bobby to catch Brink's killer," Wintringham said dismissively. "We can perfectly well identify who it is _ourselves _- you're just squeamish."

Miss Pierce's voice was very dry. "There's an allegation rarely leveled against me."

"We _have _the facilities. We have the personnel! A few days and I'll have a confession for you."

"A few days and I could have a _dozen _confessions," Miss Pierce said. "But how would we know if any of them were true?" Foyle heard her cane tap on the floor and moved soundlessly back from the French windows as she approached them. "I could get _you_ to confess to the murder of Axel Brink, James. And if you become any more insufferable, I might be tempted."

"You should remember, Hilda," Wintringham said, "you're _not_ operational. And you know a great deal less about such things than you could _possibly_ imagine."

"Then I'm not the only one in this room that could be said of," she retorted.

"You've been listening to the hysterical ranting of that Marcus woman again," Wintringham said. Foyle heard the sound of the stopper being withdrawn from a decanter, the clink of ice.

"I've known Jean Marcus to be many things," Miss Pierce said dryly. "But never _hysterical_."

Wintringham paused, and when he spoke again, his tone was conciliatory. "It's a damn shame what happened to her," he said. "And Brink. It's no wonder their nerves went. But we can't base our operational decisions on the opinions of a couple of agents who never had the opportunity to see the bigger picture."

"I disagree," Miss Pierce said. "We can't base our operational decisions on the opinions of those who've never had the opportunity to see things up close."

"If you're going to sing the same old song again," Wintringham said, "you can do it solo. I'm off."

Footsteps, the door opening and closing.

Miss Pierce leaned out of the French windows and looked completely unsurprised to see Foyle. "Mr Foyle," she said. "Do come in."

He did. "What was that about?" he asked, as Miss Pierce closed and locked the French windows behind him, and seated herself behind her desk.

"I'm afraid I can't tell you," she said.

"Ri-ight." Foyle took off his hat and sat down across from her. "You know this might go _far_ more smoothly if you could bring yourself to tell me what it is you think I ought to know instead of staging opportunities for me to overhear them."

"Old habits," she said with the trace of a smile, "die hard."

"Well _that_ one ought to be decently buried," Foyle said. He took the envelope with the scrap of fabric from his pocket and held it out to her. "Can you tell me what this might be from?"

She took it, looked inside. "A balloon," she said, and when he raised an eyebrow: "Not a rubber one, Mr Foyle. A hot air balloon, a small one if it's one of ours. Agents can use them for … various useful tricks. If you want to raise some equipment to the upper branches of a tree, to convince those who find it that an agent parachuted down instead of landing in a plane, for example."

"To raise a gun to an open window?" Foyle suggested.

Miss Pierce considered that. "I doubt it," she said at last. "They aren't all that easy to control, especially if there's any wind at all. And having done so, it would be impossible to aim and fire."

"To raise a _person_ to an open window?" Foyle asked. "Perhaps several, joined together?"

"Someone would have seen," Miss Pierce said. "The grounds are patrolled."

"Ri-ight," Foyle said thoughtfully. He took the envelope back from her and pocketed it again. "Miss Marcus and Mr Brink."

"What about them?" Miss Pierce asked evenly.

"They're the 'couple of agents' Wintringham was referring to, yes?" At her nod, he went on: "And they both had strong disagreements with him over … policy?"

"And strategy," Miss Pierce said. "But if James was moved to shoot anyone over the question it would be _me_."

"Think he might?" Foyle asked.

"He doesn't have the … _moral fiber_," she said dismissively. "Besides, he'd consider a gun too _obvious_."

"How about a disappearing gun fired in a locked room?" Foyle said. "How _obvious_ would he consider _that_?"

She looked out the window in thought, then shook her head. "I can't see it," she said. "Brink would have broken his arm and then his neck before he managed to pull the trigger."

"That's rather the case with anyone, though, isn't it," Foyle said. "Except someone he trusted so much he couldn't believe they'd pull the trigger."

"Axel Brink trusted no-one," Miss Pierce said.

Foyle turned down the corner of his mouth. "Miss Marcus?" he suggested.

"Jean Marcus," Miss Pierce said, "least of all."

"What happened there?" Foyle asked quietly.

"You would have to ask her."

"I did," Foyle said. "She said I'd have to ask _you_." He picked up his hat and studied it. "They were together in France, weren't they?"

"Were they?" Miss Pierce asked smoothly.

"We-ell, I'm not sure what _else_ you're both so _reticent_ about," he said. "And Lord knows I have no desire to go prying into matters better left unexamined but a man is _dead_ and I won't know _who_ killed him until I know _why_. And _something_ happened in France." He gave her a level stare. "Didn't it."

Hilda Pierce was still for a moment. "Yes," she said finally. "I don't see how it has anything to do with Brink's death but I suppose you should be the judge of that."

"_Thank_ you," Foyle said precisely.

She stood, and moved around her desk. "There's a bolt on the door," she said. "Near the bottom. Throw it, if you'd be so kind."

Foyle went to the door that led to the rest of the house and found the bolt. Sliding it home, he turned to see Miss Pierce lowering herself to her knees behind Wintringham's desk, leaning heavily on her cane. She pulled back the rug and exposed a small safe set into the floor, spinning the dials with practiced ease until the lock came free with a _click_.

"I'm not sure," Foyle said as Miss Pierce opened the safe, "that I'd care to work somewhere I had to lock the door against my colleagues."

"I'm not sure you'd care to work with James Wintringham under any circumstances," Miss Pierce said dryly. She took out several pieces of paper, and as Foyle crouched down beside her, laid them out on the floor. "These networks are no longer active," she said. "However, the organizational principles behind them would still be of use to our enemies."

"I understand," Foyle said. "I'm surprised you write this sort of thing down at all."

"_I_ don't," Miss Pierce said. "This is _Wintringham's_ safe."

"I take it he doesn't know you know the combination?" Foyle asked with a smile.

"It is one of the _great many_ things James doesn't know." She pointed to the first piece of paper. "Network _Hôpital. _Agent Nurse, Agent Orderly, Agent Doctor, Agent Pharmacist." Foyle nodded to show he understood, and she pointed to the other. "Network _Jardinier_. Composed of Agent Snowdrop, Agent Daisy, Agent Daffodil, and so on."

Unlike the page showing Network Hospital, the names of the agents in Network Gardener were crossed through, each and every one. Foyle touched one. "Arrested?"

"Yes," she confirmed. "Axel Brink was Agent Nurse. He was at the head of that network. _Hôpital _and_ Jardinier _were next to each other, geographically. Sometimes they overlapped. Co-ordination was at times necessary. So between the two …" Her finger traced an invisible line. "Agent _Fretin_. Our minnow, swimming through the nets. Jeanne Valois."

Gathering the papers together, she returned them to the safe and closed it. "There are two points of great weakness in any network, Mr Foyle. One is the wireless operator, who can be traced when he or she turns on his equipment, who cannot move easily with it, and who must remain in one place for the length of time it takes to send a signal." Pushing the rug back into place, she began to lever herself to her feet with her cane.

Foyle rose, and offered his arm to assist her. "And the other?"

Miss Pierce gained her feet, but did not release his arm. "The courier. Who must pass through roadblocks, sometimes many in a day, carrying weapons, equipment, papers, messages … For this reason, neither the courier nor the wireless operator know more than the absolute minimum. Few faces, fewer names."

"Because they are at greatest risk of capture," Foyle said.

She let him go, and made her way to the nearest chair. "Exactly. And everyone talks, Mr Foyle, sooner or later."

He sat opposite her. "And the less they know, the less they can say."

Miss Pierce nodded. "We have safe-guards, of course," she said. "They go into effect as soon as any agent misses a contact. Everybody talks, but if it is _later_, if their contacts have clean papers in reserve, a plan known only to themselves, then the damage can be _minimized._"

"_But_," Foyle said, thinking of those crossed out names.

"But," Miss Pierce said heavily. "We lost _Jardinier_, Mr Foyle. All of it, in one day last November, and many of the French men and women who supported it. It was an unprecedented catastrophe. Nurse closed down _Hôpital _immediately, the operatives scattered."

"The network was betrayed?" Foyle asked.

"Nurse blamed Minnow." Foyle opened his mouth and she held up a hand. "Oh, not that he thought she had gone over to the Nazis. No, he thought she must have been careless, must have been blown and not know it, and thus led the enemy to her contacts. _I_ think that if that had been the case we would have lost _Hôpital _as well, but Nurse would not be persuaded. He believed that his own precautions had saved _Hôpital _from the same fate as _Jardinier._" Her mouth thinned. "He came back with a conviction that women have no place in this organization."

"You disagreed."

She arched an eyebrow. "Do _you_ think women are intrinsically less capable, less cunning, less ruthless than men?"

Foyle smiled. "Not at all," he said. "So what do _you _think happened to _Jardinier_?"

"Suppose you are part of Network _Angler_," Miss Pierce said, leaning back in her chair and steepling her fingers. "You are Agent Trout. You work with Agent Perch, and Agent …" she paused, then waved a hand. "I don't fish. You get the idea."

"I do," Foyle said.

"You listen to Radio London - nothing suspicious about that, many Frenchmen do. One night the announcer signs off by saying 'Good news for all anglers. The trout and perch are biting well. My friend Charlie came home with four just yesterday'."

Foyle nodded. "And 'yesterday' means … tomorrow, or the same day next week, and Charlie is a place, and four is the number of agents …"

"Something like that," Miss Pierce agreed.

"You communicate with all your operatives that way?" Foyle asked.

"Yes," Miss Pierce said.

Foyle pursed his lips and ran one finger across his forehead. "A lot of daffodils and snowdrops around in France in November?"

"You see," Miss Pierce said, "what happened. What I suspect happened."

"Yes I do," Foyle said. "Someone was a complete idiot and a lot of people died, that about the size of it?"

She bowed her head. "Please believe me," she said. "You can't possibly be any more disgusted with our error than I am."

"With _Wintringham's_ error," Foyle said. "Wasn't it? He is the Head of Operations here?"

"Yes."

Foyle stood up. "You might want to look into that," he suggested mildly.

"Believe me, I am," Miss Pierce said.

"Miss - _Minnow_ blamed Wintringham," Foyle said. "Nurse blamed Minnow. Having them all under the same roof seems like a _bit_ of a recipe for disaster."

"If Miss Marcus had killed Wintringham," Miss Pierce said, "Or if Brink had killed … well, either of them, then I'd agree. But the one person _nobody_ blamed was Nurse."

Foyle thought back to what had been said about Axel Brink, the man wept inconsolably alone in his room, whose anger was directed at instructors and at students alike. "No," he said. "That's not quite true, is it? _Axel Brink _blamed Nurse."

.

.

.

* * *

A:N: Radio London broadcast from 1940 to 1944 from the BBC to France. It was entirely in French and was operated by the Free French who had escaped the German occupation. It _was _really used to send coded messages to the Resistance and to SOE operatives in France.


	11. The Death Of Air

Foyle was still deep in thought as he left Miss Pierce's office. Mary Bishop was passing through the hall and he stopped her.

"I don't suppose you've seen my driver, have you?" he asked. "Miss Stewart? Young woman, fair hair, MTC uniform?"

"Oh, yes, sir," she said, with a little bob. "She and Miss Marcus were going downstairs."

"Downstairs?"

She pointed to a door toward the rear the hall. "Down there, sir. There's classrooms down there."

Foyle raised an eyebrow. "The one Mr Brink used?"

"And Miss Marcus, sir, yes," she said.

Foyle thanked her. The door opened to reveal a narrow set of stone stairs, and he made his way down them to discover what had obviously originally been a wine cellar. The cellar had been converted at a relatively recent date, judging from the rawness of the wood where new panels closed gaps in the thick stone walls. Bare bulbs gave a sickly light.

He paused, and called: "Sam? Miss Marcus?"

"Down here, sir!" Sam's voice came back in a hearty shout. "Left and left again!"

He followed her directions and saw her standing with Jen - _Jean_ - by one of the doors. "I couldn't find anything," she said. "So I thought I'd have a look and see if there were any clues left in Mr Brink's classroom. Miss Marcus was letting me in."

Jean Marcus held up a bunch of keys. "They are all kept locked," she said. "Not that it keeps some of Mr Carey's more _enterprising_ students out but one does try to show willing at least."

Foyle walked down the corridor to join them. "Valuables stored inside?"

"Not really," Jean said. "But Miss Pierce does try to _minimise_ the number of places students might go to evade her ever-so _eagle eye_." She unlocked the door, and stepped back. "_Voila_, as they say in _La France._" Her French pronunciation was execrable, Foyle noted, marked with all the errors of one who'd learnt the language in a schoolroom and never used it to converse with a native speaker. _Of course. Jeanne Valois may speak fluent French but Jean Marcus doesn't. _He wondered if she taught her language classes as Jeanne or Jen.

"_Merci_," Sam said, her accent only slightly better. She turned the handle.

As she pushed open the door Foyle heard a sound he'd hoped to never hear again in his life; one that had ambushed him from the depths of his imagination in quiet moments for years after the war and which still had the power to make his blood run cold: the gentle _ting_ of a pin coming out of a Mills Bomb.

"_Down_!" He flung himself forward. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jen as a blur of movement, and then he had tackled Sam and carried her clear of the door, both of them tumbling to the floor.

The thick walls of the old wine cellar focused the blast through the door, which blew out in a cloud of splinters and dust. Foyle felt something sting his calf and the breath of deadly heat passed over him.

Then stillness.

He realised he was lying across Sam's legs and torso. Looking up, he saw an arm at an impossible angle, a bent body, a jumble of body parts he could make no sense of except blank horror, and then, blinking, realised he saw no blood. He was looking at Jen who, too, had fallen across Sam, curled protectively, one arm wrapped around her own head and the other sheltering Sam.

"Sam!" He could barely hear his own voice over the ringing in his ears.

"Here, sir," she said breathlessly.

"You alright?"

"Bit _squashed_," she said diffidently.

Foyle sat up. He could feel a warm stickiness in one shoe and forced himself to look down, dreading the sight of white bone and ruined flesh - but there was nothing more than a rip in his trousers and a finger-sized splinter of wood embedded in his calf, sending a thick trickle of blood running down to his sock.

Jen, too, sat up. Blood ran down her face from a gash on her forehead, bisecting the scar beneath her eye, marking her cheek with a cross of pale pink and sharp red. Her eyes were dazed. "Hurt?" she asked.

Foyle shook his head and Sam looked down at herself and gave an experimental pat to arms and legs. "No. All present and correct!"

Jen looked at Foyle, glanced at his leg and back to his face, and raised an eyebrow, then winced and put her hand to her forehead.

"Sir!" Sam said, following Jen's gaze. "You're injured!"

"It's a scratch," Foyle said, and as Sam started to scramble up, "Stay still, Sam." They had fallen hard. In the urgency of realising what that small distinct sound was and what it meant he had had no time to be cautious of her condition, but now a new fear touched him. As she ignored him, he said more sharply: "Stay _still_."

"But your leg!" she protested.

"Had worse shaving," Foyle assured her. He took out his handkerchief and, tugging out the splinter, pressed the cloth against the wound.

"Then I do suggest you sharpen your razor," Jen said dryly. She got to her hands and knees and then slowly to her feet, steadying herself against the wall, and peered cautiously through the ruined door.

"Was that a bomb?" Sam asked.

"Grenade, I think." Jen said.

"Wired to the door-frame?" Foyle asked, and Jen nodded. "When was the last time anyone was down here?"

"Five days ago," Jen said slowly. "Or six."

"Who has the key?"

"Me," Jen said. "No doubt Miss Pierce."

"Did Mr Brink have one?"

"Of course he -" Jen said. "Yes. He did."

_So perhaps his killer has one too, now,_ Foyle thought.

Running footsteps heralded the arrival of two of Hill House's MPs, closely followed by Major Stafford. His comment at the sight of the shattered door was succinct and Anglo-Saxon and he barked an order to fetch a medic in a tone that sent one of the soldiers running at a pace that would have made him a very creditable candidate for the '44 Olympics. _Provided of course the war is over by then. _

"Bad?" he asked Foyle, and when Foyle shook his head, turned to Jen, taking her face between his hands gently but without tenderness. "Look up - look left - that hurt?"

"No," she said, following his directions. "I didn't go out."

"You'll be alright, girl," he said, releasing her. "Might have a new scar."

She laughed, too brightly, and said lightly: "And I was _such_ a beauty before!"

"Bloody lucky," Stafford said. "All of you, bloody lucky. This joker damn well meant to make sure of whoever opened that door."

Looking at the splintered door, Foyle had to agree. Anyone standing in front of it - anyone who'd stepped through that door on opening it, as whoever had set the ambush must have expected - would have taken the full force of the blast.

He could, however, have done without Stafford's next muttered remark about _scraping people off walls_.

From the look on her face, so could Sam. "How did you _know_, sir?" she asked him.

"I heard it," he said. "The pin. So did Miss Marcus."

"No," Jen said. "I didn't hear anything. But you shouted, and …" she shrugged.

"Golly, sir," Sam said soberly. "Plurry good luck you came looking for us."

She was worryingly pale. "Sure you're all right?" Foyle asked her. "No … pain, anything like that?"

Despite her denials, when the Hill House MO arrived, Foyle insisted that Sam, at least, go to the infirmary. _And then_, he thought as, still protesting her fitness to work, she was led away up the corridor, _back to the vicarage and I'll be damned if she comes anywhere near this bloody place until I've put cuffs on their resident 'joker'. _

Stafford inspected the room before he'd allow anyone else to enter, then declared it safe. "Nothing else," he said.

"No pressure plates on the floor?" Jen asked gaily. "How _disappointing_! One does so wish one's would-be murderers to go to a _little_ effort!"

Foyle tested his weight on his injured leg and then limped through the door after Stafford. _No windows, no other doors_. Most of the chairs had been shattered by the blast, their remnants tumbled on the floor. On the wall, a poster in French warning of the health risks of eating cat smoldered. "You think you were meant to be the target, then?" he asked.

"Miss Pierce doesn't spend a _lot_ of time down here," she pointed out. "No-one else has the key. Who else?"

The handle of the door had been driven into the wall by the blast. Twisted by heat as it was, Foyle could still make out a strand of wire melted into the handle, confirming that the booby-trap had been as simple as he'd thought: grenade on the door-frame, wire from the pin to the door handle. Opening the door would pull the pin free, and then …

The problem with such a trap, as Foyle had learnt for himself one desperate, bloody day in France decades before, was that while it could be, with care, _set_ from the outside of a room, it could only be _disarmed_ from the inside.

He wished Jen had said _yesterday_ when he'd asked her the last time she'd used the room.

_Because six days ago, Axel Brink was still alive. Still likely to come down those stairs, and set off that grenade by unlocking the door._

_The door to which only he, and Miss Pierce, and Jean Marcus had a key_.

Jean Marcus, who had moved with the reflexes of a combat veteran at his warning.

_Or had been expecting it._

.

.

.

* * *

A/N: The Mills Bomb was the standard fragmentation grenade used by the British in World War One, variants of which were still in use in World War Two .

The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were both cancelled because of the war.


	12. Known, Forgotten, Half-Recalled

_ Sunday 7 February 1943_

_I DO NOT LIKE being blown up._

_Not that I spose anyone does but it does seem rather as if explosive devices are positively LOOKING for me. _

_One minute I was opening a perfectly ordinary door and the next I was flat on the floor under Mr F and J and trying to work out why the air was full of smoke. I would have been a goner if Mr F hadn't realised what was happening. Scraped off the wall as Mr S said. Ugh. And poor Mr F's leg! I'm not sure that it wasn't worse than he let on and he just didn't want to say because he remembered what I said about my First Aid training but HONESTLY I'm much better now at bandaging._

_Had rather too much practice. _

_Mr F made me go to the infirmary altho' I was quite alright except shall have MASSIVE bruises tomorrow but not worse than hockey really. Was not having any of his suggestion one of the soldiers drive us home THANK YOU and after we got back to the vicarage eventually had to say was tired and hide in bedroom to avoid excessive cups of tea from him and Uncle. Expect Uncle A to FUSS but Mr F frowning and asking if I was QUITE sure I was alright every two minutes did rather get on nerves. _

_That is unfair was not more than every half-an-hour really._

_But does usually remember I am grown-up and can be treated as such not as china doll. DO hope he is not working up to deciding It Is All Too Dangerous For A Girl. _

_If so, shall have to remind him I Could Quite Easily be Blown To Smithereens in Own Bed as anywhere else and Very Nearly Was. _

* * *

Under normal circumstances, Foyle would have gone fishing.

The peace and quiet of a river, the gentle murmur of water, always helped him think. Fishing took concentration and attention, but not so much that he could not let the details of a case turn over beneath the surface of his thoughts as the fish he pursued turned over beneath the surface of the stream.

At this point in a case, with the feeling that he knew everything he needed to know to reach a solution if he could only put the pieces together correctly nagging at him, he would usually have taken rod and basket and let the problem work itself out in the back of his mind.

His leg, however, while not acutely painful, was still sore enough to make the prospect of standing for a long period unattractive. Nor did he particularly want to leave Sam with no-one but her Uncle in case … in case of _in case, _despite her protestations of good health.

Instead, he took himself to the churchyard, within earshot of the house if he should be needed.

The afternoon was drawing to a close and the headstones cast long shadows over the threads of green grass struggling up through last year's sere growth. Foyle leaned against the low stone wall, shifting his weight from his injured leg, and watched the shadows grow as the evening fog began to gather in the hollows and beneath the hedges. Perhaps Axel Brink would be buried here, his life commemorated by a simple stone by a country church. Less, perhaps, than the man deserved, but Foyle could not imagine Hilda Pierce permitting any public recognition of either his service or his death.

She had confirmed, before he left Hill House, that Brink's key to the classroom was missing from his possessions. That was, in a way, reassuring: the booby-trap might easily have been set anytime in the past few days, and Jean Marcus may well have been the target.

Foyle would have preferred it if she had been neither intended victim nor possible perpetrator … _but if I'm forced to choose between those two, I would prefer her not to be a killer._

He thought about that, and amended it. _Not __**this**__ killer._

What was it Jen had said? _If you had asked me a week ago the most likely murder in Hill House, I would have said it would be myself the victim, and Axel the murderer._

_He hated me that much._

Could Axel Brink have wired that grenade, expecting Jen to trigger it, before he died?

_But why?_ Sam had pointed out that people often killed for stupid reasons, and by everyone's account Brink had been profoundly troubled and highly volatile, but Foyle found the idea of him planning to blow Jen to pieces because he believed she had been _careless in the field_ unconvincing. Had they _both _been the target of a third person? The hatred he had seen on Wintringham's face had been the kind of emotion that might easily motivate someone to plan such a vicious trap. _And if Miss Pierce has a key to the room … perhaps she is not the only one in that shared office who goes through a colleague's possessions. _

_But does Wintringham have the practical skills_?

Stafford would know.

_Stafford would know how to wire that door, as well._

There was, Foyle felt, still a piece missing. _A piece missing in France_, he thought, not sure why he was convinced of it, and then: _Miss Pierce was very quick to distract me with Wintringham's safe and his secret documents. _

_A display of utter candour, from a woman who lives in a world where it is unnatural to honestly answer whether you prefer sugar in your tea._

He found himself smiling, ruefully amused at how deftly she had manipulated him into believing she was keeping nothing back, complete with ostentatious display of her own vulnerability in the difficulty she'd had rising from the floor. _God help us if she ever decides on a life of crime_.

"Sir!" Sam's voice came from behind him, and he turned. She was standing a short distance away, arms tightly folded against the evening chill, and he straightened.

"Should you be out here, Sam?"

"Well I _wouldn't_ be," she said sensibly, "except I've come to tell you dinner's ready. And you looked rather _thinking_ so I didn't want to interrupt. Have you solved it, sir?"

"No-ot _quite_ yet," he said, limping toward her.

"Oh," Sam said, turning to walk beside him to the vicarage. "Only - _Miss Marcus_ is here and I rather hoped you'd proved she hadn't done it. Because I've invited her to stay and eat."

"I _see_," Foyle said.

"She did give us a rabbit," Sam pointed out. "And I know it's _not done _to have dinner with suspects but if she _did_ do it, I bet she had a jolly good reason like self-defence or something."

"Sam …" Foyle said warningly.

"_You _think so too," she said. "I _know_ you do."

He took her arm and drew her to a halt. "I don't think anything of the sort. Even people we know can surprise us, Sam. And war changes people."

"That's what _she_ said," Sam said unexpectedly, "about Milner. And she was wrong about _him _and you're wrong about _her. _I can just _tell_, sir."

"_Can_ you."

Even Sam usually took the hint when he used _that _tone, but tonight she met his gaze steadily. "Yes, sir. I _can_."

He paused, and glanced back across the churchyard. "We-ell, then," he said. "_Why?"_

She looked puzzled. "Why? I just - how does anyone know _anything_? How do you know where the fish are going to be when you fish? How do you know the sun's going to rise in the morning?"

"I know where the fish will be," Foyle said, "because years of experience - and quite a few pieces of advice - have taught me to recognise the signs. _If_ you know that Jen didn't murder Axel Brink-" Sam opened her mouth and he held up one finger to stop her. "_If_ you do, then _how_ do you? What have you _recognised_?"

"Golly, sir," Sam said. "I don't know."

"Think about it," Foyle said, touching her elbow to get her moving toward the vicarage again. "Think about it, and let me know when you work it out."

She hung back a moment. "Do _you_ know?" she asked.

"No," Foyle said, adding gravely: "But then, _you're_ the one who's _very perceptive_."


	13. While The Light Fails

Sam chased the last skerrick of potato around her plate, cornered it, and speared it with her fork.

"Glad to see your _adventure_ hasn't impaired your appetite," Aubrey said with a chuckle.

"Yet to see anything capable of _that_," Foyle said dryly.

Sam sat back with a sigh. "I'm too full to care _what_ you say," she said happily. "That was _heavenly_."

She began to rise, gathering up the plates, but Foyle forestalled her.

"Let me," he said, taking hold of the plate she held. "You, ah. Take it easy."

"I'm not the one who got a bally great bit of wood stuck in her leg," Sam pointed out, refusing to let go.

For a moment it seemed they were about to have an absurd tug-of-war over the crockery until Jen, too, rose to her feet, and firmly plucked the contested plate from _both_ their grips. "Guest's privilege," she said. "Since any attempt to sing for my supper would set dogs howling for simply _miles_ around, I shall wash up for it instead. Just turn me in the correct direction!"

"Allow me," Aubrey said with twinkling courtesy.

As he and Jen headed for the kitchen, Sam sank back. "How _is_ your leg, sir?"

"Barely scratched," Foyle assured her. "How are _you_ feeling?"

"Tip-top," Sam said. "Wishing there was pudding, though. But really, I'm _fine_. I wasn't _at all_ hurt and you mustn't worry about it."

Foyle scratched his forehead. "Well you have to … take _care _of yourself," he said, hoping she'd take the hint. It was up to her, of course, if she wished to confide in him, but that might be easier if she realized he'd guessed. "You had a shock today."

"We _all_ had a shock today," Sam said stubbornly.

"Still. P'raps you should … take it easy tomorrow?" he suggested. "Get some rest?"

"Absolutely not, sir!" Sam said. "Besides, statistically, it wouldn't be safe."

Almost certain he would regret asking, but unable to resist, Foyle raised an eyebrow. "How is that exactly?"

"Well, sir," she said, "the _first_ time Jerry bombed me were were in the pub together. And the _next _time was the bomb on my house. And then the plane blew up and that was the both of us again. And this time, too, we were both there. So the law of probability means that the next time will _have_ to be when I'm on my own."

Foyle rubbed his chin and carefully didn't meet her gaze. "No-ot _quite_ sure that the law of probability applies in this case," he said, keeping amusement out of his voice. "And you forgot one - the bomb in the depot office. You were on your own that time."

"Didn't go off, doesn't count," Sam said promptly.

"I see," Foyle said. "We-ell it's certainly an argument."

"My logic is unimpeachable, sir," Sam said firmly.

"That's one word for it," Foyle said, hiding a smile.

"So I shall be sticking to you like _glue_, sir, during working hours I mean of course, for my own safety," she declared.

"Ever been bombed in a police cell?" Foyle asked, and when she shook her head: "So statistically you'd be safest if I locked you up for the duration?"

"You can't do that, sir!" she said, shocked. "I haven't broken any laws, well, not important ones. Recently. And the food's _terrible_!"

"I'm sure I can find an appropriate provision under some regulation or other," Foyle said, "and I _will _if you don't stay with the car at Hill House tomorrow."

"_Sir!_" she protested.

"There's someone playing very dirty tricks," Foyle said. "And I don't want them playing any on _us_. So don't let the car out of your sight while we're there. I'm counting on you, Sam."

That was, he reflected, possibly laying it on a bit thick, but it convinced her. "Roger, sir! No-one will lay a finger on it. Count on me."

"I always do," he assured her.

"_Right_," Jen said briskly from the doorway. "I managed not to break _too_ many of your uncle's dishes. He's just finding us a glass of wine."

"Oh, _blimey_," Sam said, bolting to her feet. "Quick, out the back."

Foyle, too, rose. "Must get you back before curfew," he said, reaching for his hat and coat. "Allow us to give you a lift, Miss Marcus."

She looked from one to the other and the corner of her mouth quirked up with amusement. "I see," she said gravely. "Thank you, I will accept your offer, if my bicycle …?"

"Easily fit in the boot," Sam assured her.

They made their escape with the alacrity of housebreakers who hear a barking dog.

"That bad?" Jen asked from the back seat as Sam steered the car out of the vicarage drive.

"You really can't imagine," Sam said. "I mean, you _really _can't. There's _nothing_ that could _possibly_ give you a frame of reference."

"Thank goodness," Foyle said dryly.

"Then thank you for saving me from spoiling the memory of that delicious fish. I say, Mr Foyle - do you think you could show me where you caught them on the way back? For when rabbit becomes _tedious_."

Foyle glanced back to see her regarding him steadily. "Of course," he said, and - although it was anything but: "Nice night for a walk."

Sam's wide eyes and tightly compressed lips practically shouted _Golly, it's like a spy flick! _but with what Foyle suspected was a heroic effort she navigated the route to the stream where they'd fished with nothing more than inconsequential social chatter, pulling up with a cheery: "Here we are!"

"May as well stay in the car, Sam," Foyle said as Jen got out. "We shouldn't be too long."

"Roger, sir," she said, and settled back, hands on the wheel, clearly preparing to keep a vigilant look-out against sabotage.

Foyle joined Jen and they walked side-by-side in silence for a few moments. There was a little moonlight, enough to catch the white square of bandage on Jen's forehead and limn the edge of her narrow shoulders as she hunched them against the damp chill of the rising fog. She had, he could tell, gained back some of the weight she had lost between their first and second meeting, but not all of it, and in the darkness gave an impression of greater frailty than in daylight.

They reached the bank of the stream, and finally she spoke.

He had been expecting information, perhaps even - _God forbid_ - a confession. Instead, she turned to face him, hands in her pockets, and asked: "What's wrong?"

"Wrong?" he repeated.

"Something's worrying you," Jen said. "Something's wrong."

"Besides the murder of what was, by all accounts, a good and brave man?" Foyle asked dryly.

She didn't smile. "Besides that."

Foyle looked at the water running in the dark, almost invisible in the shadows and the mist. "A personal matter," he said at last. "Not relevant."

"If you tell me, I may be able to help," she said.

"I doubt it," Foyle said. "But thank you."

Jen sighed. "How many months?"

He turned. "Did she tell you?"

"No." Now she did smile. "But normally, a guest gets the largest portion, then the men of the household. You made sure Sam got twice as much as anyone else and shorted yourself to do so. And even the most chivalrous English gentleman doesn't fight a woman for the right to wash up. You must be sure and be more careful, Mr Foyle, if you wish to keep her secret."

He inclined his head. "I'll bear that in mind."

"So," she said. "How long?"

"Six weeks, I believe," Foyle said.

"So your son was home for Christmas," Jen observed, and at the look on his face: "You _flinched_, Mr Foyle, the other day, when I said 'grandfather'. Will they marry?"

"They certainly bloody will if I have anything to do with it," Foyle said with feeling, and Jen began to laugh. "You think I'm wrong?"

"Many a marriage has begun under similar circumstances," she said, and then, after a pause: "_Mine _did."

"Were you sorry?" he asked.

"No. I was happy. I was too young to know really if I loved Jacques or not, at the beginning. But we had a good marriage, Mr Foyle, and I _did_ love him." She was still, looking out into the trees marching gray into the rising night mist. "Until he died."

"And after, I think," Foyle said gently.

"And after," she agreed.

Still gently, he said, "I have to ask you some questions. About Axel Brink."

"I know." Jen took a step away from him. "I will answer your questions, Mr Foyle, _all _of them. But first, let me tell you - there are still Pawleys at Housel Bay." She gave a wry smile. "They are a close-mouthed, secretive family, by habit now if not, any more, by profession. They will remember Jen Pawley, who was widowed so young, and her first boat, the _Windhover_, that she holed trying to pass too close to Keelbreaker Rock, an embarrassing story she'd only ever share with a friend. They will ask no questions, they will tell no tales, they will find room for any young friend of Jen Pawley's who might need a place to stay … until her child is born. They will find room for the child, if that is what is needed, and more than room, they will find love."

"Not my decision," Foyle said.

"No. But if it is a option that is needed …"

"I'll tell her," Foyle said. "Thank you."

Jen inclined her head. "You were right," she said, "when you said that she was kind to me. Now." She put her hands in her pockets, squared her shoulders. "Ask your questions."

She looked to Foyle a little too much as if she was waiting for a firing squad, and he looked away to collect his thoughts. "Axel Brink blamed you for the arrests of your network," he said at last. "You knew that?"

Jen nodded. "He made it very clear that he blamed me. He was strongly of the opinion that I had only been arrested because of my inherent feminine incompetence."

"And were you?"

Jen shrugged. "I don't know how they knew. But women are generally safer than men, in France. The Germans are …" She shrugged again. "_Femme au foyer_. _Kinder, Küche, Kirche_. At a checkpoint, they search all the men. A little beetroot juice on my lips, a smile … _'Willst Du mich suchen möchten, Liebling_?'"* Her smile was sly and knowing, the toss of her head and the shift of her hips worthy of a Piccadilly Commando. Then, in an instant, Jean Marcus was back. "They never _did, _of course. Absolutely _terrified_, poor boys. Waved me through petrified that if they came within arm's length I'd do something indecent."

"How did they arrest you?" Foyle asked.

"Middle of the night, broke down the door, dragged me out in my nightie, beat me bloody in the street and threw me in a truck," she said rapidly, and then drawled: "_Frightfully_ boring, darling, you have no _idea_, Germans have no grasp of the concept of hospitality _at all_."

"And then?"

She was silent.

"Jen," he said. "_Jeanne_. And then?"

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* * *

A/N: * 'women at home' - principle of the conservative Vichy regime

'"children, kitchen, church" - actually a 19th century German phrase, not used in Nazi propaganda (although there was considerable emphasis on the social attitudes the phrase embodies for example Hitler saying that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home",) but, in the English speaking world, 'the 3 Ks' was widely associated with the Nazi regime.

Both the Resistance and SOE's Section F employed female agents in high visibility roles precisely because the sexist assumptions of the Nazis and the Vichy regime made them less likely to suspect women.

"Do you want to search me, darling?"

Jen's description of a female SOE agent's technique to get through German checkpoints owes much to SOE Agent Nancy 'White Mouse' Wake's accounts of her career as the most wanted women in France during WW II, continuing to run successful courier missions under the noses of the occupying army despite a 5 million franc bounty.

'Piccadilly Commando' was wartime slang for prostitute.


	14. I Left My Body On A Distant Shore

A/N: This chapter deals implicitly, although not explicitly, with some distressing concepts. I have kept it in line with books marketed as "YA" so hope the rating continues to be appropriate.

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Jen stood motionless, poised as if ready for flight. Foyle reached out a hand and she flinched back from him, perilously close to the mist-shrouded stream.

"Jen," he said again, and then: "_Agent Fretin_."

She twitched toward him, away again, feet slipping on the grass. Foyle seized her arms before she could fall.

"Tell me about Agent _Infirmier_," he said, holding her fast.

"He is on the other side of it," Jen said. Her teeth were chattering, although the chill in the air was not that severe.

"The other side of _what_?" When she didn't answer, he shook her gently. "Look at me. _Look_ at me, Jen."

She raised her head slowly and he waited until he was sure her gaze had focused on his face, before asking: "What _happened_?"

Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Night and fog."

"I'm sorry?" Foyle said.

Jen pulled away from him, and he released her. Abruptly, she sat down on the grass, ignoring the damp. Foyle sat beside her despite the chill that penetrated his coat.

"_Nacht und Nebel_," Jen said. "That is what the Germans say. Night and fog."

He understood her to mean something more than the night which was gently drawing around them now, the fog breathing from the ground. "Night and fog. What does that _mean_, exactly?"

She told him.

After the first few sentences, he knew it had nothing to do with the crime he was here to investigate. After the first few minutes, he knew he did not want to hear.

If she could see that on his face - and he thought she could, from the flick of her gaze past him, from the way she turned, then, and spoke to the mist and the trees - she had no mercy.

But then, there was no mercy anywhere in the tale she told, so perhaps it was right that she herself had none for him.

"They begin with starvation," she said, precise, academic, as if she spoke of a university experiment carried out on rats.

Weeks of it, gnawing hunger in an unending darkness punctuated only by the screams of other prisoners, to weaken the body and the will, to let imagination and anticipation do their worst. Food, sometimes, a gruel of slimy potato peelings, a heel of moldy bread.

"The prisoner must remain alive until the interrogation begins," Jen told the river running invisible before them. "And, of course, it is useful that the prisoner is now in a state to be grateful for even small gifts from her interrogator. The interrogations themselves are in a way such a gift. They are carried out, after all, in a lighted room, not in the dark. There are people there, faces for the prisoner to look at, voices for her to hear. When the prisoner is taken to an interrogation session, at least she knows she has not been forgotten, left to accidentally starve to death in the dark." She stretched out a hand to touch the grass beside her. The slight movement stirred the fog around her. "These tricks are not unknown to the prisoner. She expects them." Her hand fell back to her side. The fog was still. "They are, however, effective."

Foyle listened. Carefully, attentively, although she would have had no way of telling if he had deliberately let his mind wander, if he had let her words wash over him like a splash of scalding water that could leave no lasting burn. He listened to every word she said as she went on to talk of _soldering irons_, of _pins_ and _fingernails_ and _carbolic acid, _committing them to memory as if they were a witness statement, as if he would later have to repeat them in court.

_If necessary, I __**will**__ one day repeat them in court_. If Jeanne Valois - Jennifer Marcus - Jen Pawley did not have the chance.

_If there is a court for these crimes._

_And if there isn't, then what are we fighting for, after all?_

"The prisoner comes to understand," Jen said quietly, "that the purpose of the interrogation is not information. She is not a wireless operator. She does not have any useful codes that can be used to feed false information. She knows only a few faces among her network, knows them only by their _nom de guerre_. By the time her interrogation begins, anyone whose identity she could betray has long since quietly disappeared, to reappear far away with a new name, new papers. And the prisoner begins to realize that her interrogators know that very well. No, the purpose of the interrogation is _confession_. There is a strange adherence to certain legalities, even as the prisoner watches her interrogator heat the knife blade which will, he tells her, slice open her eye." Her hand went to the scar on her cheek, and then fell away. "The prisoner has been arrested on suspicion; she is being interrogated on suspicion; but she cannot be executed on suspicion. No, they cannot execute her until she confesses."

She paused. "It occurs to the prisoner that it is entirely appropriate that her interrogators come from the same country as the novelist Franz Kafka. It occurs to the prisoner that this would make an excellent play. There are only four actors and one set, minimal costume changes - although West End audiences might not appreciate the stench of excrement needed to add verisimilitude after the prisoner has been tied to her chair for four days. It could be a comedy of manners if such comedies routinely included lit cigarettes held to the skin. The prisoner is lying - the interrogator is lying - they both know the other is lying and they both know the other knows that _they_ are lying. The interrogator will win if the prisoner, even for a moment, tells the truth." She was silent a moment. "There is of course no way for the prisoner to win. Her only goal can be to keep the game going."

"To stay alive," Foyle said.

"To stay alive," Jen agreed. "The prisoner must, of course, defeat not only her interrogator's determination but also her own growing conviction that to lose the game would not be such a bad thing. It would, after all, mean the end of the soldering iron, the ice water, the knives and pliers and cigarettes."

"But you did," Foyle said gently.

"The prisoner is stubborn, which is one reason she was chosen for her job. The prisoner is also _competitive_, and in the end this is what makes the difference. She speaks French. She speaks _only_ French, with the few German words anyone living in occupied France picks up. She screams in French. She sobs in French. She pleads and begs in French. She even vomits in French. Eventually - the prisoner will later learn it has been six weeks although at time she will no longer know if it has been six days or six years - eventually the interrogator will … give up? Grow bored, perhaps?"

"So he released her?" Foyle asked. "You?"

"Ah, _non_. There is no release for the prisoners of night and fog, Mr Foyle. Once they swallow you, you are a memory and nothing more. _Non_, the prisoner is to be transfered. Drancy - although she does not think that is where the journey will end." She paused. "Many people have been sent there. None have come back, and yet there are no rumors of the camp becoming larger."

"Executions?"

"_Peut etre_," she said. "_Mais_ … I think something would have been heard, if there were bodies. Nothing is heard. There is nothing but silence from the night and the fog." She plucked the grass beside her, shredding the new spring growth. "_This _prisoner, she is loaded onto a truck with a number of others also _Nacht und Nebel. _Most of them can't stand unaided but the truck is so crowded that no-one could fall if they tried to. Not very far along the way, the truck is forced to stop by a tree fallen across the road. The driver and the two guards get out of the truck. The prisoner hears gunshots. The rear door of the truck is opened. A man calls her name."

"Axel Brink."

"Axel Brink," Jen agreed. "Agent _Infirmier. _He leaves the other prisoners to the care of the _maquisards_ with him. Jeanne Valois, he props on the handlebars of his bicycle - he has provided a second cycle for her to ride but it is clear she is unable - and rides with her under the full moon to a field they both know. It is a long way. It is a hard ride, to make it in time. She hears him sobbing behind her, with pain, with exhaustion, but there is not enough left of her to encourage him, to tell him how grateful she is." She was silent a long moment. "There is not enough left of her to be grateful."

Foyle could imagine it: the broken woman, the desperate man, the bicycle, the moonlit road.

And, he knew, he could not imagine it, not in any way that approached the truth, any more than Jen, if he had said _the mud was deep enough for men to drown in, _could have really understood what it was like to watch a man you knew slip sideways off the duckboards and be sucked down to his death.

"He reaches the field in time," Jen said. "The plane that lands there is not for Jeanne Valois, but for a certain object, one which you perhaps may guess."

"Yes," Foyle acknowledged.

"The plane is not for Jeanne, but there is room for her on the return trip. The woman who has made her way through a dozen German checkpoints with this object hidden in plain sight, who is there to meet the plane, gives it to Jeanne for safekeeping. The plane takes off. Jeanne is free. By the next day, she will be safe. By the next day, twenty five men whose homes lie closest to the place Axel Brink organized the ambush will be shot in the street."

"I see," Foyle said, and he did. "Not your fault. Not _his_, either."

"_I_ know," she said. "_He_ didn't." She shivered, and wrapped her arms more tightly around her knees. "He blamed himself, he blamed me, he blamed the whole idea of what we do."

_The anger, against the instructors and the students, against Miss Pierce and Lieutenant Colonel Wintringham_ … _all based in guilt._

But there was something else, something that carried a more _personal_ edge. What had Anne Overton said? _He called us whores. He called Lieutenant Colonel Wintringham a pimp._

"You were lovers," Foyle said, certain of it. "You and Axel Brink."

"Yes," Jen said. "I am, Mr Foyle, a 'loose woman', as our illustrious leader so kindly reminds me. Guilty as charged."

"Wouldn't have put it quite that way myself," he said mildly. "Given the circumstances. No doubt you both ... needed a certain comfort."

"Axel did," Jen said.

"And you?" Foyle asked.

"I needed Axel to continue to do his job. His nerve went, Mr Foyle, quite quickly. I suppose it's something that they can't really test us for, in advance. If they could, Axel would have failed. It made him …"

"Useless?" Foyle suggested.

"_Dangerous_," Jen corrected. "Nervous men look guilty. Nervous men arouse suspicion. Nervous men get picked up for questioning. And Axel knew … a great many names. So yes, I seduced him. Deliberately, with calculation. What is that legal term? _Mens rea_." She paused. "Or do I mean _mea culpa?_"

"Did it work?" Foyle asked.

"Yes. Axel had certain views, you could say they were _old-fashioned_ except I suspect there are more than a few men of all ages who share them." She shrugged. "I knew he would force himself to be braver and bolder than the woman who shared his bed, and he did. His pride was a more powerful motivation than his patriotism."

"But," Foyle said, watching her, "he fell in love with you."

She paused, and then, on the gust of a sigh "Yes."

"And so he rescued you. Not the others from Network _Jardinier. You_._"_

Her voice was little more than a breath stirring the fog. "Yes."

"And people died," Foyle said. "And then he returned, and discovered that ... you were perhaps not _quite_ as much in love with him as he was with _you_."

"Yes," Jen said. "He saw it as a betrayal."

"I dare say he did," Foyle said .

She folded her arms tightly around her stomach. "You do, too, don't you? You think I betrayed him."

"I think you … _used_ him," Foyle said judiciously .

"Yes," she admitted. "I did."

He could barely see her now through the night mist. "But not more harshly than you used yourself." She was only the faintest outline, a shadow, a slight darkness in the murk.

_Disappeared in the night and the fog._

"Jen." It came out more sharply than he'd intended.

She moved a little, solidified out of the fog, like a ghost drifting closer. "_Oui, c'est moi_."

"Jen," he said again. _Not Jeanne. Not Jean. Not any of your ghosts. _"Did you kill him?"

"Yes," she said, and in her voice was the ring of utterly exhausted truth. "A year and a half ago, in France, I killed him. It just took this long for someone else to pull the trigger."

She began to weep then, soundlessly, almost motionless.

Foyle wondered how often she must have wept so, alone in some night's darkness where any escaping sound could betray her, to have learned to shed her tears in such utter silence. _C'est la guerre_.

Then he thought of a young widow with three small children sleeping in some small house on the Cornish coast, and thought perhaps her lessons in noiseless grief had been learned earlier than France.

If she had been a man, Foyle would have found something to study intently on the opposite bank of the stream until her composure was recovered; if she had been almost any other woman, he would have held her. The first was inadequate, the second an intrusion on the dignity with which she struggled with her anguish.

He put his hand on her back, feeling the hitch and shudder of her breath, and simply sat, so she would know that at least for this one moment she was not alone.

When she grew still, he let his hand fall. "If you didn't set that grenade, someone else did," he said. "Possibly someone else who thought that you would open that door. Are you safe at Hill House?"

Jen lifted her head and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. "What is _safe_?"

"We-ell," Foyle said, "for the moment let's agree that it's 'not in imminent danger of being murdered in your bed'."

"I don't know what that would feel like anymore," she said flatly.

He got to his feet, wincing at the stiffness in his injured leg, and held out his hand to help her up. "No, I suppose you don't."

Jen rose without his assistance. "There are many empty rooms at Hill House," she said. "I can sleep in one of those tonight."

"I have a better idea," Foyle said, starting back toward the car, "although it _will_ mean facing a danger greater than you've ever known."

She followed. "And what is that?"

"Uncle Aubrey's greengage wine," Foyle said.

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A/N:

The Gestapo decree, _Nacht und Nebel_, means "Night and Fog". This policy, enforced in the occupied countries, meant that whenever someone was arrested, the family would learn nothing about their fate. The persons arrested, sometimes only suspected resistors, were secretly sent to Germany, often to a concentration camp. Whether they lived or died, the Germans would give out no information to the families of the suspects. This was done to keep the populations quiet out of an atmosphere of mysterious terror and fear. Nacht und Nebel deportations began in 1941, although the full implications of the policy were not understood in either the occupied territories or in England until much later.

At the Nuremburg trials (according to some present) many observers removed the headphones conveying translations of the testimony of survivors because they could not bear to listen any more. I did not mean to imply any weakness of character in Foyle's reluctance to hear Jen's account: only the innate human resistance to accepting the reality of horrific events.

Treatment of captured SOE agents in France varied somewhat, an initial period of interrogation, followed by deportation to Germany to a concentration camp was a very common outcome. Lilian Rolfe Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, and Violette Szabo were executed at Ravensbrück. Eliseé Allard, Robert Benoist, Jean Bouguennec, Angehand Defendini, Julien Detal, Emile-Henri Garry, Frank Pickersgill, Pierre Geelen, Marcel Leccia, John Macalister, James Mayer, Charles Rechenmann, Roméo Sabourin, Arthur Steele, Denis Barrett, Henri Frager, Pierre Mulsant and George Wilkinson were executed at Buchenwald . Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman were executed at Dachau.

While the Nazis employed (with considerable success) sophisticated, non-coercive interrogation techniques against many captured Allied soldiers and airmen, captured spies were frequently subjected to brutal torture intended simply to elicit confessions which could justify execution. A small handful of agents successfully stuck to their cover stories in these circumstances, their only hope of survival. This was not without psychological price and some required extensive psychological help after the war to resume their 'real' identities.

Agents from overseas were not the only ones to face this fate: the French Resistance's casualties were, at the lowest estimate, 8,000 dead in action, 25,000 shot, and 27,000 killed in concentration or extermination camps.

One of the 'staging camps' in France for deportation to concentration camps was located at Drancy.

_Maquisards - _members of the Maquis, the rural French Resistance

"Collective punishment", the massacre of innocent civilians in retaliation for Resistance, Partisan, and espionage activities was a feature of Nazi-occupied Europe, although by no means unique to the Third Reich.

"_Mens rea_" - Latin for 'guilty mind', in law (roughly) the intent to commit a crime.

"_Mea Culpa_" - Latin for 'through my fault', a religious phrase that is part of the Catholic mass but which has passed into common parlance.


	15. Words I Never Thought To Speak

_ Monday 8 February 1943_

_Jolly glad Mr F has decided J is innocent. Don't know what she said to him last night but when they came back to the car she looked like she'd been crying absolute BUCKETS, blotchy and limp as a wet dishrag. Mr F put her in the car quite gently and said Back to the vicarage I think Sam with Eyebrows Two, meaning Don't Ask so I didn't. Uncle A was AGOG when we came back of course so I told him we'd realised not enough petrol to get all the way and J had flat tyre on bicycle. He was too polite to say he could tell I was lying but gave me a Look to make sure I knew that HE knew and made up the couch. Then argument of course over who would sleep on couch which I won by pointing out had done so before when younger and knew where the sharpest springs were and how to avoid them. _

_Was somewhat shorter last time though. _

_Anyway not sure what Mr F has planned today but he had QUITE satisfied look wch he gets when He Knows Who Did It. Hope that means will not have to guard car all day, super boring. _

_Gosh have just time while waiting for Mr F to write but MUST when J and I washed up after breakfast I realised she is in An Interesting Condition golly! Explains EVERYTHING altho' not sure how but it MUST. Said several things about Awkward For Unmarried Women In Trouble and how they Needed Friends - must mean me how flattering! even tho' terrifying as don't know the first thing except there are Homes somewhere - and Someone To Confide In Who Understood. Can't be very far as she's quite slim still. Is AB the father? Was that what she told Mr F last night? _

_GOLLY she was in Hastings in December. COULDN'T BE._

* * *

Sam hurried out of the vicarage front door, gloves in hand. "Sorry I'm late, sir," she said.

"It's all right, Miss Marcus is _later_," Foyle assured her. "Sure you're all right to drive today, Sam?"

"Absolutely, sir," she said firmly.

"Ri-ight, well," Foyle said. "You will say something if you're not feeling the best, won't you?"

"Yes, sir, but I'm quite tip-top."

He studied her out of the corner of his eye, not convinced. Not that she looked unwell, but she certainly didn't have that indefinable bloom of health that he remembered Rosalind showing in the early months of her pregnancy with Andrew, even before her waistline began to thicken.

"I say, sir," she said casually, brushing an invisible speck of dust off the bonnet of the car. "I was wondering if you knew something."

He raised his eyebrows, watching her. "About the case?"

She hesitated, polishing the spot where the dust had been with her thumb. "I'd rather not say."

"We-ell … about what, then?"

"In the - the _hypothetical,_ as it were," she said, still not meeting his gaze.

Foyle settled his hat on his head, and then strolled around the bonnet of the car to lean against it, beside her. "Hypothetically what?"

"I wondered what - well." She turned her back to the car as well and leaned beside him, directing her rapid words to the gloves in her hand. "There was a girl at school, sir, who got _in trouble_ as it were, and no-one ever talked about it except her parents took her away and sent her to somewhere in the country and she came back next year and that was that." Twisting the gloves in her hands, she asked: "Is that what always happens, sir? When a girl gets into difficulties that way?"

_Oh, Sam_. "No-ot … always," he said gently. "Rather depends on the girl's family, and the girl herself."

"And her friends, sir?" Sam asked.

"And her friends," he assured her. "She might stay with her parents. There's always marriage, of course, if she's willing. Or visiting friends in the country. Or, yes, there are _places_ women can go, to be away from people they know until … it's over."

"I see," Sam said quietly.

"No need for her to go anywhere, of course," Foyle suggested, "if she has family or friends to stand by her."

"People do rather sort of look sideways at women," Sam said, "if they're not married, and - and they're known not to be married."

Foyle grimaced. "Some people do," he said. "A reason some girls choose to go away."

"And give the baby up to someone else, another family."

"Mmmhmm." He took off his hat and studied it closely. "Up to her, of course. Gossip dies down, especially these days. I don't think … a girl in that situation should have to do something she doesn't want to."

"No, sir," Sam said, looking at him at last with a sunny smile. "I didn't think _you_ would."

"_You_ won't have to go anywhere you don't want to," he said.

Sam frowned. "Sir?"

"If … well." Foyle put his hat back on and busied himself adjusting it. "No need to leave Hastings, unless you want to."

Sam frowned. "I can't leave! I couldn't exactly drive you if I were somewhere else, sir."

Foyle inclined his head. "No-o … but you won't be able to drive me indefinitely, will you."

"Well, no," Sam said. "The war has to end sometime."

_Could she really be so dense as to think she could continue to drive him after she began to show?_ "Or … other circumstances."

She frowned again. "Other circumstances, sir?"

_Not dense. Just frightened. Too frightened to admit to herself the reality of her situation_. "We-ell. Whatever the circumstances, Sam, it'll be up to you, what you want."

"Well, thank you sir. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the MTC!"

An alarming thought occurred to him. _Good god, she wouldn't be so foolish, would she? _But he knew, every policeman knew, that a desperate woman confronted with an unwanted pregnancy could be very foolish indeed.

He cleared his throat. "No need for any … _rash_ measures," he said. "It's, ah … dangerous."

She gave a little huff of exasperation. "I told you, sir, I'm _quite_ as safe with you as anyone can be in times like these."

"But, ah …" He was trying to frame the warning delicately yet unmistakably when the front door opened and Jen emerged, and he gave it up for the moment.

"Hello, Miss Marcus!" Sam called cheerily. "Did you find everything alright?"

"Absolutely fine, thank you," Jen said. She had managed to repair her appearance very creditably, and could easily have blended in at any county fete.

Sam opened the driver's door. "Back to Hill House, sir?"

"Back to Hill House," Foyle confirmed, getting in to the car.

"Do you know who did it, sir?" Sam asked as she settled herself behind the wheel and waited for Jen to get in the back.

"Few things I need to look into," Foyle said, leaning against the door and watching her as she started the car down the drive.

"Like what?" She turned to look at him. "Do you know where the gun is?"

Foyle indicated the road ahead with a motion of his head and Sam snapped her attention back to her driving. "I have a guess," he said. Taking the envelope with the scrap of treated fabric from his pocket, he offered it to Jen in the back seat. "Care to tell Sam what that is?"

Jen shook the fabric out into the palm of her hand. "It's a balloon," she said. "Part of one, anyway, good luck blowing _this_ up."

"How do they work exactly, these balloons?" Foyle asked.

"You need a heat source," Jen said, returning the fabric to the envelope and handing it back. "Open fire's a bit tricky, a stove works better, soldering iron, something like that. Fill it up with hot air and it goes up."

"How long in advance would you need to do that?" Foyle asked.

"You have to be fairly nippy. Ten minutes to be safe." Jen paused. "Where did you find it?"

"Underneath Axel Brink's _window_," Foyle said. "How much could one of these _lift?_"

"Five pounds or so," Jen said. "So, yes, Mr Foyle, if I follow your train of thought, one could quite easily lift a gun."

"I see," Foyle said. "Thank you."

Sam drew the car to a stop at the front of Hill House. "Are you going to make me - I _mean_, do I need to watch the car _all day_, sir?"

Foyle paused, lips pursed, and Sam looked at him pleadingly. He sighed. "No-o," he said. "Our _joker_ won't be tampering with the car. _But _you won't go wandering off on your own, and you certainly won't take it into your head to open any doors, understood?"

Sam beamed. "Yes, sir!" She got out. "So have you solved it, sir?"

Foyle adjusted his hat a little, and gave her a sidelong smile. "Actually, Sam," he said, "_you_ have."

Leaving her staring at him, he started up the stairs to Hill House for what, he profoundly hoped, would be the last time.

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A/N: thanks to all who reviewed. Reviews feed the muse!


	16. My Thoughts And Theory

Sam was close behind him as he stepped into the entrance hall. "Sir! What do you _mean_?"

Foyle turned and held a finger to his lips, eyebrow raised, and she subsided.

Jen had followed them more slowly and she trailed behind as Foyle crossed the hall and knocked on Hilda Pierce's office door.

"Come in!' Wintringham called imperiously.

Foyle raised his eyebrows at Sam, and opened the door. "Colonel Wintringham," he said, "Miss Pierce."

"Ah, Mr Foyle," Wintringham said. "Come to tell us 'whodunit'? That's the phrase, isn't it?"

"That's _a_ phrase, certainly," Foyle agreed politely, moving to the centre of the room. "But actually, I've come to ask Miss Pierce what she took from Mr Brink's desk." Behind him, Sam took a sideways step to stand unobtrusively by the wall, _at least, as unobtrusively as Sam does anything_.

Wintringham turned. "Hilda? You didn't tell _me._"

"That's because I didn't take anything," Miss Pierce said. "I don't deny, Mr Foyle, I _would_ have if there'd been anything that uncleared individuals shouldn't see, but Brink's tradecraft was too good for that."

"I see," Foyle said. "Care to explain the two hour delay between Miss Bishop raising the alarm and looking in Brink's room?"

"I assumed he wasn't _in_ his room," Miss Pierce said. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "Obviously, I was in error."

"Why?" Foyle asked, looking at her sidelong under the brim of his hat. "Where else did you think he'd be?"

Miss Pierce hesitated and Jen said from the doorway: "_Tell _him, Hilda. Axel's dead. I doubt he _cares_."

"It didn't seem relevant," Miss Pierce said, "given he'd been murdered."

"P'raps you'd better let me decide what's _relevant_," Foyle suggested mildly.

"Yes," Miss Pierce said. "I didn't think he'd been in his room, Mr Foyle, because he'd talked of _hanging _himself, and I knew there was nothing in his room he could have used to do so. That's why I had the grounds searched first."

"Understandable that you'd want to protect his memory," Foyle said. "He was a hero, no need for people to know he … was unstable. Bu-ut … next time you _might _want to remember that a man can hang himself from a doorknob if he really _wants_ to."

"I'll bear it in mind," Miss Pierce said dryly.

"Is that all, Mr Foyle?" Wintringham asked. "No great feats of deductive reasoning to share with us?"

"I'm afraid not," Foyle said. "I would like to have another look at Brink's _room,_ though."

Wintringham rolled his eyes, but Miss Pierce opened the drawer of her desk and took out a bunch of keys.

As she rose to her feet, Wintringham protested: "Hasn't this gone far enough?"

Foyle turned. "Far enough?"

"You've tried, Mr Foyle, and you've failed. Not your fault, of course - you can hardly have had the experience to contend with the people we train here."

"Well _thank_ you I think," Foyle said.

"So it's time to move on and try something that _works_," Wintringham said.

"We-ell, if by … _that _you mean the interrogation techniques I understand you use to prepare your … _graduates_ for what lies ahead," Foyle said, "I'm _fairly_ sure that whatever confession you manage to extract won't be from the man who killed Axel Brink."

"It was a man, then," Miss Pierce said.

"I need to see his room again to be sure," Foyle said.

"Then follow me." Leaning only lightly on her cane, she led the way out of the office and up the stairs.

They made a minor procession, Miss Pierce, Foyle, Sam, and Jen bringing up the rear. Miss Pierce unlocked the door and stood back. "Should we have Major Stafford check for booby-traps?" she said, and Foyle thought she was only half-joking.

"Better safe than sorry," Foyle said. "Miss Marcus?"

"Right-o!" she said cheerily. "Do stand back, civilian-type people, behind the imaginary rope line, while the UXB Warden-ess does her thing!"

Foyle _did_ stand back, as much to make sure Sam did also as because he really believed there might be a grenade wired to _this_ door. Miss Pierce, he noted did not. Catching his glance, she said dryly: "I can hardly show a lack of confidence in our training."

Jen knelt by the door, removed the key, and peered through the keyhole, then gently turned the handle just enough to disengage the snib. She pushed open the door a bare eighth of an inch, and studied the gap before picking up the keys and selecting the longest, which she pushed through the gap and gently ran up and down. "All clear," she announced brightly, and pushed the door fully open with one enthusiastic shove.

"How did you know," Sam asked as Foyle moved forward to the doorway, "that it wouldn't go off as soon as you opened the door _at all_?"

Jen rose to her feet and dusted her knees. "Can't set a pineapple from the outside with the door _closed, _can you? Need enough room to hook the wire over the handle, which means there has to be a _bit_ of play."

"Have you done it a lot?" Sam asked. "I say, how do you know when you go home or something that someone hasn't done it to _you_? It would be awfully conspicuous to go through that whole rigmarole every time you opened your front door."

Miss Pierce cleared her throat and gave Jen a meaningful look.

"Oh, _do _relax, Hilda," Jen said. "If Miss Stewart was a security risk I think we'd _know_ by now." As Foyle studied Brink's room once more he could hear Jen in the hall explaining something to Sam about _hair_ and _a good gob of spit_.

_Oh, wonderful_, he thought, examining the window frame with narrowed eyesand anticipating a future that would involve Sam insisting on examining every door before he was allowed to go through it.

"Can I ask," Miss Pierce said from where she leant on her cane in the doorway, "why you believed I'd taken some of Brink's papers?"

"We-ell," Foyle said, "if the breeze from the window had been strong enough to disarrange the papers, it would have blown them _in_ to the room. They're pushed toward the _back_ of the desk. When I first saw them, I assumed it was the result of a rather hasty search." He turned to smile at her, and quoted back: "Obviously, I was in error."

The window had been closed at some time in the past few days. Foyle opened it again, and ran his finger along the underside of the frame. As he'd expected, there was an irregularity. On close inspection, he saw a narrow groove, relatively fresh, with a chip of paint missing.

"What is it?" Miss Pierce asked. "What have you found?"

Foyle turned. "I've found," he said, "I need to see your _roof_."

.

.

.


	17. Through The Unknown, Unremembered Gate

The locks, bolts and hinges on the door to the roof were so rust-encrusted that, after a brief effort, Foyle suggested they send for oil.

It came with Major Stafford and two MPs. Foyle let the young men struggle with the task. There was no urgency.

"Surely," Miss Pierce said, "you don't believe the killer climber from Brink's window to the roof."

"No-ot the killer, no," Foyle said.

With a mighty heave, the two MPs forced the door open. Major Stafford gestured to it. "Would you like to do the honors, Mr Foyle?"

"Thank you," Foyle said. "Oh, Major … which way was the wind the night Mr Brink died?"

"Slight sou-westerly," Stafford said. "Overton had the devil of a time compensating for it."

Foyle nodded. As he'd thought - any breeze coming in Brink's west-facing window would have swept the papers to the floor, not toward the sill.

"Sir," Sam said, peering out onto the roof "do you think you ought to? With your leg?"

The rake of the roof was hardly steep enough to cause even Miss Pierce difficulty, and substantial crenelations at the edge would stop any accidental slide, but Foyle could see Sam was almost bursting to be the one to make whatever crucial discovery lay ahead. He pursed his lips. "Maybe not," he said. "Take a look for me, would you?"

"Yes, sir!" she said, beaming. Taking off her hat and gloves and handing them to the nearest MP, she stepped cautiously out onto the roof. "What am I looking for, sir?"

"What can you see?" he asked instead of answering.

"Right, well, not much. Pleasant view." She took a few more cautious steps. "The roof's in good condition. No footprints. Four chimneys. One of them looks like it's been repaired recently."

"How so?" Foyle asked.

"Some wire left wrapped around it," Sam said. "And some sort of - sir!"

"You alright, Sam?" He took a step out onto the roof himself to see her picking her way a little more quickly than he would have preferred toward the westernmost chimney.

"I've got it, sir!" she called back. Reaching the chimney, she stood on tiptoe to unhook the long strand of wire wrapped half around it.

One end came easily, revealing rags of fabric attached to the end. The other, Foyle could tell, took her more effort. "Careful," he said. "Don't break it." _Or fall._

"Yes, sir," Sam said. She sat down on the roof, heels braced against the tiles, and tugged harder. "Like playing a fish."

He edged toward her. "Nice and easy."

"Yes, sir." She was silent a moment, concentrating on the wire, and then let it go slack. "Sir!"

"You alright, Sam?"

"Perfectly, sir, only I've worked it out."

"Worked _what_ out?" he asked.

Sam tugged on the line again. "How I know," she said. "What I _recognised_, sir. It was the door."

Foyle held his hat on against the breeze. "What about the door?"

"To the classroom," Sam said. "If Miss Marcus set that trap, she would have known it was there."

"Seems logical," Foyle said. "She let _you_ open the door, didn't she?"

"Yes, sir," Sam said. The line was caught on something and she wriggled it back and forth. "But she stepped _back_. She was behind me. If she'd been expecting the explosion, wouldn't she have stepped to the _side_?"

_She __**did**__ step back, _Foyle remembered. Jen had been behind Sam as he'd heard the pin come loose; he'd tackled Sam away from the door and the blur of movement that had been Jen moving to the same instinct had come from his _left_, the other side to the door.

"Well done," he said.

"Thank you, sir," Sam said. "But it was you who told me, really. I _knew _but I didn't _know_ I knew until you explained."

"We-ell," Foyle said, watching her, "part of police work is understanding what your instincts are telling you. But having good instincts is the starting point."

Sam turned and gave him a beaming smile, just as the resistance gave, nearly sending her backward. She reeled in the rest of the wire easily, and bent to pick up the object on its end.

"I say, sir," she said, standing and turning toward him. "I rather think this might be a fairly important clue."

Foyle looked at the Luger in her hand.

"I rather think," he said, extending his hand to help her the last few steps to the door, "you might be right."

.

.

.


	18. A Symbol Perfected In Death

"It strikes me," Foyle said, "that there's a certain poetic irony to this."

They were again in the office Miss Pierce and Wintringham shared. Hilda Pierce had seated herself in one of the armchairs, while Wintringham paced restlessly. The Luger, with its attachment of wire and ruined balloon, lay on the coffee table where Sam had placed it before retreating to the side of the room - _in, no doubt_, Foyle thought with amusement_, the fervent hope she won't be noticed and sent away_. So far, at least as far as Wintringham was concerned, it seemed to have worked: Miss Pierce's gaze had passed coolly over the young driver and away again.

Major Stafford stood, ramrod straight, staring down at the gun, while Jen had wandered to the French doors, looking out across the gardens.

"What the bloody hell does _that_ mean?" Wintringham asked impatiently.

Miss Pierce's lips quirked. "Mr Foyle means, James, that the _last_ time a violent death brought him to Hill House, it was a faked suicide. _This_ time, it was a real suicide and a faked murder."

Foyle inclined his head. "And _attempted_ murder," he pointed out, with a glance at Jen's back.

"Well, are you going to let us in your brilliant deductions?' Wintringham asked impatiently.

Miss Pierce raised her eyes, briefly, to heaven, and waved a hand. "Assist him, if you'd be so kind, Mr Foyle."

"We-ell it did strike me that the one thing on which _everybody _agreed was that the only person who wanted Axel Brink dead was … _Axel Brink_," Foyle said. "And as one very perceptive individual pointed out to me…" He glanced at Sam. "If the gun had been found with him, no-one would have suspected anything other than suicide."

"But the gun _wasn't_ found with him," Wintringham pointed out. "It was found on the roof."

"Absolutely," Foyle said. "Found on the roof, attached to what _had_ been a miniature hot-air balloon until the south-westerly wind on the night he died blew it onto the chimney by a length of wire … wire _which_ left a distinct groove on the underside of the window-frame in his room. The gun disarranged the papers on Mr Brink's desk as it was jerked through the window. There was also," he added, "a chip of paint missing from the frame where the barrel of the gun knocked against the frame as the balloon pulled it through the window. You can see the matching paint on the gun."

Stafford peered. "Bloody hell," he said. "So you can."

"_Why_ would a murderer remove the weapon in the first place, let alone in such an arcane manner? All he or she had to do, if they were really so _dense_ as to not realize that staging a suicide was the best way to avoid detection, was to walk out with it in a pocket and toss it in the nearest pond." Foyle eyed the gun, the wire, the shredded balloon. "So what possible use is this … _complicated_ rigmarole? None whatsoever, except for the fact that it removes the gun from the room _automatically_ as soon as the hand holding it lets go." He tilted his head "Very useful indeed if what you need is a way to dispose of a gun after you yourself have been _indisposed_ by that very same gun."

"So Brink killed himself in a way that looked like murder," Wintringham said. "He was obviously more disturbed than we knew."

Foyle's lips twisted. "He was exactly as disturbed as _you knew,_" he said tightly. "But _unfortunately_, the abominable disregard for Mr Brink's health just so long as he continued to be _useful_ to your organisation isn't a matter for the law." He inclined his head. "At least Miss Pierce set a professional … what's the term? _Minder_? to keep an eye on him."

"A professional minder?" Wintringham said. "What on earth do you mean, Foyle?"

"We-ell," Foyle said, "a housemaid who claims to have been in service since she was _fourteen_ who has a severe allergy to _laundry _soap, who can recognize a Luger by _sight _but pretends not to know the name, who was alert to the possibility that Axel Brink might have been _suicidal _and who reported immediately to Miss Pierce rather than to, as one might expect, the housekeeper …" He turned to Hilda Pierce. "And she told me she was telling the truth … _once _too often for me to believe her. Former agent?"

Miss Pierce shook her head. "She didn't have the aptitudes," she said. "_Terrible_ marksmanship."

"I see," Foyle said. "So you brought her in from another station to … what, exactly? Observe your students and report _directly_ to you on their suitability?"

"Nonsense!' Wintringham burst out. "That's - "

Miss Pierce's cool, dry voice cut across his bluster. "Quite true." She raked Wintringham with a wintry glance. "Close your mouth, James."

"Why was I not informed of this?" he demanded.

"_Well_," Foyle pointed out, "she could hardly report on _you_ if you knew about her, could she."

"On _me!" _Wintringham's color was high. "This is an _outrage_! I -"

"Oh do be quiet," Hilda Pierce said. "You're annoying me, and even less forgivably, I suspect you're boring Mr Foyle." She planted her cane in front of her and rested her hands on it. "Mary Bishop, as _you_ know her, is a bright young woman with a sad lack of physical co-ordination. I found another use for her. _No-one_ looks at servants." She raised an eyebrow. "Except for you, Mr Foyle."

"Occupational hazard," Foyle said.

"But who set the booby-trap?" Stafford asked.

"Ye-es," Foyle said. "The Mills Bomb. Set in a room to which only three people had the key, Miss Marcus, Miss Pierce, and Axel Brink. Not that lack of a key would _necessarily_ hinder someone with sufficient ability with _locks_, but as Liam Carey made _quite_ clear the other day, there's a lamentable lack of lock-picking ability in Hill House at the moment. And Carey, while a dab hand with a kate* in his younger days, could never have managed that trap with the state his hands are in now." He paused. "If Axel Brink had been murdered, there was the possibility that his killer took his key and used it, but since he _wasn't_, that leaves us with rather a reduced pool of suspects. I doubt Miss Pierce would need to resort to explosives to remove someone, however troublesome."

Her genteel snort said as clearly as words, _Hardly._

"And Miss Marcus, if she'd been aware of the trap, would have stood to the side of the door, not in the direct range of the blast," Foyle said, with a glance at Sam. She was pink with pleasure at having her logic validated. "Which leaves us, doesn't it, with Axel Brink. No-one had been in that room since he _died_. _Perfectly _possible for him to have rigged up the grenade, disposed of his key, gone back to his room and shot himself in the head."

"A symbol perfected in death," Sam said suddenly, and blushed when they all looked at her. "Sorry. Just, um. Something I was reading."

Jen spoke without turning from the window. "I never thought he'd have the nerve."

"Not the first thing you've been wrong about, Jeanne," Wintringham said.

Her shoulders stiffened as if she'd been struck, but she said nothing.

"Mr Brink's real target, of course," Foyle said, "was Colonel Wintringham." Wintringham opened his mouth but Foyle didn't pause to let him speak. "He intended the Mills Bomb for Miss Marcus, yes, but the ultimate object of his plan was to discredit Hill House and your organisation. Why else plan a murder to occur after he himself was dead by his own hand? Dispose of his own key to the classroom to make it seem as if his murderer had taken it? And make sure his own death looked so very suspicious?"

"But _why_?" Stafford asked. "The man was one of our best! Are you saying he was working for the enemy?"

"Not at all," Foyle said. "Nothing suggests that the loyalty to his country which motivated him to serve in the first place had been at all diminished. _But_." He paused. "He'd come to view this organisation and the certain … _ruthlessness_ which it requires as a threat to the country he was determined to preserve."

"Casualties are inevitable in war," Miss Pierce said.

"I'm aware," Foyle said quietly. "And if casualties had been all that concerned Axel Brink, I don't think we'd be here today. But he learned something two weeks ago, or _thought _he did, that he felt he could not live with, or leave … _unaddressed. _The night, I think, Miss Cresswell heard him in his room."

"Well, I can't think what that could possibly be," Wintringham said.

"_Can't_ you." Foyle said tightly. "Are you going to pretend you were unaware of the relationship between Miss Marcus and Mr Brink? It would have come out in Miss Marcus's debriefing, wouldn't it? In fact Miss Marcus as good as told me it did."

"Our debriefing processes are _strictly_ confidential," Wintringham said. "Miss Marcus -"

"I didn't say anything," Jen said, swinging around from her survey of the grounds beyond the French doors.

"No-ot _quite_ true," Foyle said. He quoted back to her: " 'A "loose woman", as our illustrious leader so kindly reminds me.' It didn't seem _particularly _likely you were talking about Miss Pierce. Mr Brink was extraordinarily angry about the _intimate _relationships women here might engage in, wasn't he?"

"The realities of war," Wintringham said loftily. "You can't possibly understand."

"Well I _understand _that Mr Brink was disillusioned when he realised that Miss Marcus had no intention of resuming their physical relationship," Foyle said. "And I _understand_ that disillusionment occurred quite soon after his return from France. And I _understand_ that at some point in the more _recent_ past his disillusionment turned to the kind of hatred and rage that makes a man capable of murdering the woman he thinks he loves." He paused. "And I _understand_ that there are a limited number of circumstances that might prompt a man to throw a term like 'loose' at a woman and regard her with the _dislike_ I've seen on your face for Miss Marcus. She wasn't willing to do for you what she did for Mr Brink, was she, Colonel? Which," he added with icy politeness, "I can. Also. Quite. _Understand_. But Mr Brink saw some part of that interchange that led him to believe she _was. _And that tipped him over the edge."

"Is this true?" Miss Pierce asked evenly. "_James_. Is this _true_."

Wintringham shrugged. "That Brink might have seen something he misunderstood? How should I know what was going on in his head?"

"Miss Marcus?" Foyle asked.

Jen gave Wintringham a level stare, and then turned to Foyle, lifting her chin. "_Oui_," she said. "_C'est vrai._ _Il m'a demandé de le rencontrer dans ma classe quand tout le monde était au dîner. Il était ivre. Il prétendit après que c'était un test, qu'il n'avait rien signifié. Nous savions tous les deux que c'était un mensonge."_*

"Did he touch you?" Foyle asked quietly.

She nodded. "_Oui_."

"Then if you would like to lay charges against Colonel Wintringham, Madame Valois," Foyle said, "it would be my _very_ great pleasure to arrest him."

Miss Pierce's cool, dry voice cut through Wintringham's bluster. "Jen," she said, and nothing more.

Jen hesitated, and then shrugged. "And say _what_ to the court?" she asked. "That a man, whose identity I can't reveal, in a location which I can't reveal, made remarks to me about certain events which I can't reveal … No, Mr Foyle. I do not think that would convince a judge."

"You may be right," Foyle conceded. _Even without the complications of the Official Secrets Act, this would not be an easy conviction to secure. _No witnesses, no injuries at this late date, no immediate report, and a complaining witness whose character would be called into question by Wintringham's lawyer. "_But_ … I'm not of the opinion that the personnel of this organisation should be above the law."

"Then you'd better arrest Miss Marcus," Wintringham said. "For theft, arson, trespass, not to mention murder."

"Miss Marcus will receive a summons regarding her actions in _England _at an appropriate time," Foyle said politely. "France is a little beyond my jurisdiction. And acts of war a little different to a common, sordid, criminal assault."

"There was no assault," Wintringham said dismissively. "A misunderstanding, nothing more."

Jen moved sharply, and almost on the instant Miss Pierce's cane came down on the floor. "Major Stafford," she said. "Please remove Colonel Wintringham to the security wing. He is not to communicate with anyone."

"With pleasure," Stafford said. He strode to the door and flung it open.

"This is ridiculous," Wintringham protested. "I'm the Head of Operations!"

"You can walk," Stafford said, taking his arm in an expert grip, "or my lads can drag you."

"You won't get away with this, Hilda," Wintringham said as Stafford pushed him toward the door.

"My dear James," Miss Pierce said coolly, "you don't seem to understand: I already _have._" As the door closed behind the two men, she turned an assessing gaze on Foyle. "You forced my hand, there," she said.

"Oh I very much doubt it," Foyle said with a smile.

Miss Pierce gave an answering twitch of her lips. "Perhaps not," she conceded. "And it is … _useful_ to have Major Stafford as an ally in this." She turned to Jen. "You should have told me what he did."

"And what would you have done, against the Head of Operations, before he had the chance to make an _operational_ decision regarding me?" Jen said. "What _could _you have done, because one slightly soiled ex-agent complained he took her by the arm and touched her improperly before she cooled his ardour with a well-placed knee?"

Miss Pierce pursed her lips. "James Wintringham underestimated my resources," she said. "I'm surprised, however, that _you _did." She got to her feet, leaning on her cane, and made her way to her desk, picking up a folder and turning to offer it to Jen. "You should start with this," she said. "Time is of the essence."

Jen hesitated, and then took the folder. She flipped it open and scanned the first page, then looked up. "This is …"

"An important decision for the new Head of Operations," Miss Pierce said. "Get it right."

Jen straightened almost imperceptibly. "_Yes_, ma'am," she said.

As she turned back toward the window, absorbed in the file, Foyle said quietly to Miss Pierce: "A neat resolution to your … questions of _strategy_."

"Sometimes things work out," she said without a flicker of expression.

"Mmhmm …" Foyle said, raising his eyebrows.

"Really, Mr Foyle," she said with a trace of exasperation, "if you're imagining I had anything to do with Brink's actions, do you really think I would resort to such a needlessly _convoluted_ scheme?"

"No-o," Foyle said. "That is a point in your favour."

"I'm touched," Miss Pierce said. She raised her voice a little and called to Sam: "Do sit down, Miss Stewart. Your resemblance to the wallpaper will not grow any stronger no matter how long you try to blend in to it."

Sam glanced at Foyle, and at his nod, edged toward the chairs. "Thank you, Miss Pierce."

"Just out of interest," Foyle asked, "at what point _did_ you realise that Brink had taken his own life?"

"The grenade," Miss Pierce said promptly. "The only people with a motive to kill both Mr Brink and Miss Marcus were James Wintringham and Brink himself. And James hasn't had steady enough hands to wire that sort of trap for months." She glanced deliberately at the decanters on the shelf behind Wintringham's desk, and then back at Foyle. "When did _you_ know?"

"It was actually _Miss Stewart_ who solved the case first, in a way," Foyle said. "She suggested that Mr Brink had shot himself and disposed of the gun. Wasn't until I understood _why_ the balloon that I could see how he did it."

"Dreadful waste," Miss Pierce said. "If he'd confided in me all this could have been avoided."

Foyle grimaced. "Doesn't seem to be a lot of confiding in _anyone_ going on here," he pointed out.

"An occupational hazard," Miss Pierce said. "Truth may be the first casualty of war, but _trust_ is the first casualty of espionage."

_Trust_, Foyle thought, _trust and Axel Brink. _

.

.

.

* * *

A/N: 'kate' is arcane slang for lockpick

*Yes. It's true. He asked me to meet him in my classroom when everyone else was at dinner. He was drunk. He pretended after that it was a test, that he had meant nothing. We both knew it was a lie.

The first recorded use of this phrase is _Truth and the War_, by E. D. Morel. London, July 1916: "'Truth,' it has been said, 'is the first casualty of war.'"

Winners of the contest are: Utopia, Jewell, Wolseley37 and AnneBronteRocks. Let me know the name you choose and he or she will appear in the yet-to-be-titled sequel. Still a few chapters to go as there are _one_ or two loose ends to tie up.


	19. An Easy Commerce Of The Old And The New

_ Monday 8 February 1943_

_Gosh what a rotter W turned out to be! Not a murderer tho' but as Mr F said on the way back to Uncle A's the law has more mercy than Miss P so suspect W will get his Just Desserts somehow. Thought for one horrible moment that W was the reason J is In Trouble but seems not phew what a relief! Still don't know quite what to do except Stand By Her as Mr F suggested whatever THAT means. Don't see how as we're back to Hastings tomorrow and looks like she'll stay at HH. _

_Shall have Uncle A ask her for dinner tonight so can have Proper Talk to her before we leave. _

_Lorry in drive wonder who_

* * *

Foyle was packing his case for the next day's early start when he heard the lorry in the road shift gears and then make the turn into the vicarage drive.

Half-expecting a contingent of Major Stafford's MPs come to escort him and Sam away under 18B, he took the time to put on his jacket and straighten his tie before he went downstairs, and so Sam's cheerful "_Andrew!_ There's a turn-up for the books! What on earth are you doing here?" gave him advance warning of the sight of his son, looking somewhat travel-stained and weary, swinging down from the back of a RAF truck.

"Hello, Dad," Andrew said, overly casual. He rapped on the side of the lorry. "Thanks, chaps!"

The driver leaned out of the window. "Don't mention it," he said. "And I mean it, laddy, or they'll have my hide for the detour."

"Mum's the word," Andrew assured him.

As the lorry moved off down the drive, Foyle noted his son had no luggage, just his gas-mask case slung over one shoulder. "No time to pack?" he asked.

"Bit last minute," Andrew said. "And I can't stay, have to make roll-call tomorrow. I'll catch some kip at the airfield. Flight back leaves at silly o'clock."

"How will you get there?" Foyle asked.

"Walk I suppose," Andrew said. "It's not that far."

"I'll drive you, if you like," Sam said brightly. She turned to Foyle. "If you don't mind, sir?"

Foyle shook his head.

"Thanks, Sam," Andrew said with an easy smile. "You're a sport."

Foyle eyed his son. _Charming young bounder, _he thought sourly. "Well it's good to see you," he said. "Bit of a surprise, though."

"You _said_ you'd be here," Andrew said.

"I was thinking of a telephone call," Foyle said. "Come in. Sam, is there tea?"

"Absolutely," Sam said. "There's even sugar! And there's fish for dinner."

"Is there?" Foyle asked, following them into the vicarage.

"There'd better be, sir," Sam said over her shoulder as she headed to the kitchen. "Uncle Aubrey's invited Miss Marcus to dine and if there's no fish I don't know _what_ we'll do."

"Ri-ight," Foyle said. "That's my afternoon sorted, then."

"I'll give you a hand," Andrew said casually.

Foyle raised his eyebrows. _Since when do __**you**__ volunteer for an afternoon with a rod and line?_

Andrew gave him a sharp look back. _Take a __**hint**__, Dad._

_Right_. His son wanted to talk privately, and Foyle could guess what the topic would be.

If not for Sam's bright chatter, the tea would have been drunk in silence. There was no danger of that, though, as she filled Andrew in on the people he knew in Hastings, and quite a few, Foyle was sure, that Andrew _didn't_ know. Between them, they kept the conversation limping along until Andrew drained his cup and set it down.

"Right," he said, "unless you can wring any more out of that teapot, Sam, Dad and I had better get on with bringing home the bacon. Or the … what's the fish equivalent? Scales?"

"My son, the wordsmith," Foyle said dryly, getting to his feet.

Andrew rose as well. "Nothing to write about fishing," he said.

Foyle paused in the act of reaching for his hat. "Where the wandering water gushes, from the hills above Glen Car, in pools among the rushes that scarce could bathe a star …" He raised an eyebrow at his son.

"We seek," Andrew said with resignation, "for slumbering trout. I concede. You are never wrong."

"Would think you'd have learned by now," Foyle said, poker-faced.

Sam's laughter followed them out the door, and on the way to the stream Foyle found himself thinking of the house in Hastings once more echoing with a young woman's happiness, a child's voice. _Not big enough, of course_, he thought, _once this is over and Andrew comes home. _That was the only outcome he would consider, had allowed himself to consider since his son had joined the RAF. _Not big enough then, but __**until**__ then … and perhaps it's too big for me, now, anyway. Could find something more suitable for myself, when the time comes. _

The pang at the idea of leaving the home of so many memories was not as sharp as he expected when it came with a picture of Sam Foyle with a baby in her arms, welcoming her husband at the door.

They were standing side by side on the bank with lines in the water before Andrew's voice interrupted his thoughts.

"You're quiet today, Dad," he said, then amended: "Well. Even more quiet than usual."

Foyle made a non-committal noise, flicking his lure clear of the water again and letting it settle in a promising spot.

"Well?" Andrew said impatiently.

"We-ell, I suppose I was wondering if … there was something you wanted to tell me?" Foyle asked.

"_Me_?" Andrew said, seeming genuinely taken aback. "No, why?"

"Oh, I just … _wondered_," Foyle said.

"Are you going to tell me what this is about, Dad?" Andrew said, turning to look at him, rod trailing forgotten from his hand.

"About?" Foyle asked, concentrating on his line.

"Are you in some sort of trouble?" Andrew asked bluntly. "I got your distress signal, even if we worked it out for _me_. You couldn't mistake Eliot for Auden in a pink fit. Someone accuse you of sedition again?"

"_I'm_ not in trouble, no," Foyle said.

"Then what is it?"

A fish struck at the lure, and landing it took both their attention for a moment. It was a beauty of a brown trout, or as Andrew put it, _not a bad main course_.

When the fish was safely secured, and Foyle had his line back in the water, he said: "Can't I want to talk to you occasionally?"

Andrew paused. "Fine," he said at last on an exasperated sigh. "I've just called in two months worth of favors to hare down here, but by all means, don't tell me why."

"We-ell I'm sorry for the inconvenience," Foyle said. "It was a slip of the pen. It's good to see you, though."

"Yes." His son's tone was gentler. "You too, Dad. How's Sam?"

"Well as can be expected," Foyle said, shooting his son a sideways glance. Andrew's face showed nothing but casual interest, and Foyle well knew his son was almost as bad at a bald-faced lie as Samantha Stewart. _She hasn't told him_. He played his line across the surface of the river and considered how to phrase what he had to say.

"Had a case recently," he said at last. "Young girl in trouble."

"And that made you think of me?" Andrew said. "Thanks very much." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I _was_ paying attention to at least one of those fatherly talks you gave me."

"Not foolproof," Foyle pointed out.

"I remember you saying that too." Andrew shrugged. "Hasn't been a problem. And things don't need to … _go further_, these days, if it was."

"Well _that's_ out of order for a start," Foyle said sharply.

Andrew rolled his eyes. "The world's changed, Dad," he said.

"The _law_ hasn't," Foyle pointed out. "And what you're referring to is a bloody dangerous operation, I'd hope you realise. Girls end up scarred. End up _dead. If_ a girl were to tell you that your precautions had been _less_ than effective, I'd very much hope you'd face up to the situation." Foyle watched the ripple against the current that indicated a fish was drifting closer to the lure. "I know your salary's not much, but I'd help you as much as I could."

"I don't know whether to be insulted or grateful," Andrew said. "Leaning toward the former at the moment."

"God knows I know what it's like," Foyle said. "You're young, you're in a bloody difficult line of work, it feels like there's no tomorrow. But you're not the only one who'll have to live with the consequences."

"Got it," Andrew said shortly. "If I knock a girl up, I'll make sure and get her down the aisle before I go down in a ball of flames. Good talk, Dad."

"_Andrew_. I'm trying to say that you mustn't be afraid to come to me, if … there were a reason to. No need to try and manage on your own."

"Roger," Andrew said. "Wilco. Now can we _drop_ it?"

The fish struck, giving them both a welcome excuse to do just that.

.

.

.

* * *

A/N:

"Bringing home the bacon" and "wordsmith" may feel like modern phrases, but the former was first used in print in 1906 and the latter was coined a few years before. I don't know if 'silly o'clock', the English equivalent to 'oh dark hundred' i.e. when normal people would prefer to be asleep, was in use in England in WWII but it _felt_ very Andrew.

Foyle quotes "The Stolen Child" by WB Yeats, published in the 1880s.

In "A Lesson in Murder" Foyle tries to forge a bond with Theo Howard by discussing T.S. Eliot, showing considerable knowledge of Eliot's work. Although there's nothing to support this in canon, it occurred to me that given wartime censorship, Foyle and Andrew might have come up with a way for Andrew to signal he was in some sort of trouble he couldn't write about and needed his father's help which wouldn't alert anyone reading the letter, especially after Andrew was framed for treason in "Eagle Day", and that a deliberate error in reference to poetry they both knew might be it. Whether Foyle's error in his letter to Andrew in Chapter 3 was deliberate, accidental, or 'accidental on purpose' I leave it to _you_ to decide.

Abortion was touched upon in the episode "Among The Few". Foyle's remark to the doctor in the episode that the murder of a pregnant woman was the ending of "two lives" gives an inkling of his attitude. The 1930s were a time of active debate on the question of legalizing abortion and even the _Infant Life Preservation Act 1929_ contained exceptions for the preservation of the life of the mother. In 1938 the case of _Rex v. Bourne _allowed doctors to take into account the "mental and physical wreck" of a pregnant woman. In 1939 the _Birkett Committee _recommend further changes to the law. Evidence to the committee showed that, regardless of the opinions of lawmakers and medical professionals, the majority of women believed it was not wrong to end a pregnancy 'before quickening', i.e. before about 15 weeks. Some legal and theological scholars had argued for centuries that life began at 'quickening' although others argued for different measures such as when the fetus began to resemble a human child or at conception.

The difficulty in obtaining a legal abortion made trying to terminate a pregnancy tremendously risky, especially for those of limited means. Many illegal abortionists were doctors who'd been struck off for malpractice, and septicemia, uterine rupture and hemorrhage were common complications.

Efforts to change the law went into abeyance during the war, but I have tried to convey the complexity of attitudes which contemporary sources record.


	20. In The Uncertain Hour Before The Morning

The light was fading when father and son returned to the vicarage, carrying what Foyle knew would make an unfortunately meagre meal for five, especially once Andrew and Sam's respective impressive appetites were taken into account. _Perhaps Aubrey can perform a __**small**__ miracle of the loaves and fishes_ …

As he stepped into the kitchen he was alarmed to see Sam, unflappable Sam, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

"What's - " _happened, _he was about to say, when behind her, he saw Jen and Sam's Uncle Aubrey, both with equally streaming eyes, and detected a distinct tang of fresh onion in the air.

"A whole onion!" Sam said, sniffling happily. She held out a pearly slice. "Sir, have a sniff! It's _glorious_!"

Her enthusiasm was irresistible, and first Foyle, then Andrew, obediently inhaled the eye-watering scent.

"And that's not the half of it!" Aubrey said, cheerfully raising a bright green glass in their direction. "Miss Marcus is the hero of the hour."

"I say," Andrew said, making a bee-line for the stove, "do I smell rabbit?"

Jen raised her own grass green glass to her lips and lowered it - the liquid, Foyle noted, remaining at exactly the same level - and then wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her blouse. "Flopsy, Mopsy _and_ Cotton-tail," she said.

"I loved those books as a kid," Andrew said. "Now all I can think of when I remember them is _yum_."

"_C'est la guerre_," Jen said with immense solemnity. "First they invade Poland. Then they ruin the sentimental childhood memories of hundreds of thousands of Englishmen. Is there nothing to which those fiends won't stoop?"

"Apparently not," Foyle said dryly. He tipped his catch into the sink. "I've got the starter here, looks like. Got a pan?"

The kitchen was really too small for five people, but no-one wanted to leave the delicious aroma of cooking. Jen, Sam explained, had arrived on a bicycle so heavily laden it was _positively listing_, and there was early cauliflower, new potatoes, and savoy cabbage as well as the rabbits. Aubrey pressed a glass of wine on Andrew and Foyle - Foyle copied Jen's example and watched his son try to express appropriate appreciation after taking a healthy swig, and then - as soon as Jen had engaged Aubrey in a discussion of the relevance of Cardinal Wolsey's writings to current world events - discreetly tip the remainder down the sink.

As the windows darkened and Sam and Foyle juggled more pans than the stove could quite fit, it seemed almost as if the kitchen had been separated from the rest of the world, as if for these few hours the war was held at bay outside the door, while inside fish fried and arcane theological debates raged and a young man had his knuckles firmly rapped by a laughing young woman for trying to steal a piece of potato from the roasting pan.

The spell endured as dinner was served, Aubrey giving Andrew a long and spirited critique of T.S. Eliot's views on spirituality and Andrew, after a slow start, dredging up half-forgotten schoolroom sessions to give as good as he got. Sam surprised both of them with a few lines which, she explained, were from Eliot's latest, and a lively discussion on the definition in context of 'behovely' ensued, with Sam plaintively complaining that she _still_ didn't know what nettles had to do with anything and Andrew, marginally impaired by a second and unwise glass of Aubrey's wine ('It does improve with practice, Dad.') trying to explain.

Jen laughingly professed no knowledge of any poet younger than John Donne and began to clear the table.

"Allow me," Foyle said, rising to help.

In the kitchen, Jen put the dishes she held in the sink, and then turned to look back through the door into the dining room. "For tonight," she said softly, "for tonight, the war is over."

Foyle added his own burden of crockery to hers. He was about to agree when the sight of the window over the sink now covered with the regulation heavy blackout curtains shattered the fragile illusion of normalcy. Before the sun rose his son, his beautiful son, who was at that moment reducing Sam and Aubrey to peals of laughter with improvised doggerel on the subject of nettles in fine fettle refusing to settle for petals, would be on his way back to the airfield where he trained other men's sons for the desperate, gallant battles of the skies. Before morning, the woman beside him would be back in the shadowy corridors of Hill House to teach the brutal lessons of the war _she_ fought to brave boys and girls who would never be young again.

He closed his eyes for a moment. "I am too old to believe that."

Jen moved closer to him. The cuff of her blouse brushed his sleeve. "Such a gentleman." She laughed softly. "You could have pointed out that I, also, am too old to believe it."

"It was a different war," Foyle said gently.

Jen reached up to touch the collar of his shirt. "And can this war, too, not be over? For tonight, for us?"

He covered her hand with his, keeping her from moving her fingers from his collar to his neck, keeping her from moving away, and shook his head wordlessly.

"Why not?" she said.

"Because it wouldn't help," Foyle said simply. "Because you're not Axel Brink. Because how you feel about seducing him won't be changed by allowing you to seduce _me_. And because I've learned that sometimes we do survive. Sometimes we live to … live with consequences. Live with ourselves."

She closed her eyes and stood motionless for a breath, for two, and then gently slipped her hand from beneath his and stepped back.

"The war may end one day," Foyle said. "What name will you be using then?"

"Oh, in case I am an easier consequence to live with _then_? " Jen asked, arching an eyebrow.

"I do have a summons for you," Foyle said mildly. "Nice to know what name to fill in on it."

"Of course," Jen said. "How could I forget? If you need to reach me, for your summons … or otherwise. Put an advertisement in the classified in the Times. _Wanted to buy, one blue bicycle, must have green handlebars. _And the number where I can call you. I promise I will - if I can."

_If I am alive_, she meant.

"I hope you do," Foyle said.

Chairs scraped in the other room. "I'm off, Dad," Andrew called.

"I will do," Jen said softly, "my _very_ best, Mr Foyle."

A half-smile lifted the corner of her mouth, a balancing asymmetry to the scar on her cheek would forevermore pull at the lower lid of her left eye. Grey salted her dark hair more liberally now than when they had first met, and the fine lines that told of a lifetime squinting against the sun's dazzle on the sea ran deeper, but she still stood with the confident solidity of the young, feet apart, weight balanced, as if bracing against the rise and fall of a boat's deck.

_May you find a fair and following wind, _he wished her silently. _May you steer clear of the rocks. May you run_ _safely into harbour._

Aloud, he said: "Thank you," and turned away to go and say goodbye to his son - knowing already that by the time he returned to the kitchen, she would be gone.

.

.

.

* * *

A/N:

February is a little early for the vegetables I've listed. Perhaps Jen's source had a south-facing hill …

'For tonight the war is over' is a quote from a _not_ contemporary song, '1917', a late 20th century faux-traditional song narrated by a French prostitute who can offer nothing to the young English soldiers in the Great War who come to her bed but a few hours forgetfulness. If you wish to hear the song, google "Niamh Parsons 1917"


	21. All Manner Of Thing Shall Be Well

_ Tuesday February 9 1943_

_Didn't have chance to have Proper Talk with J last night what with Uncle A hovering and driving A to airfield, she was gone when I got back. And letter not really satisfactory as one must assume everything read these days and expect most DEFINITELY at HH. Shall have to think of something clever and if can't, ask Mr F. _

_A in foul mood on drive back tho' bucked up when I pointed it out. Dad being Dad he said and talked about poetry the rest of the way. _

_Still don't understand about nettles. Suspect don't have poetry-type brain. Do definitely have police-type brain tho' which is much better brain to have. Solved the case on first day after all except for few tiny details. _

_There ARE women in the Force, I've read about them. Not lots but Mr F would give me an excellent reference am sure. After war of course. _

_Must ask M about what training involves. Am sure could get head-start by putting all the waiting for Mr F to good use by memorising regulations etc._

* * *

Foyle chewed the inside of his cheek and watched the landscape slide past the windows as Sam drove them back toward Hastings. She was chattering brightly about the meal last night and _how jolly nice_ it had been of Jen to bring so much food and - after a side excursion into the glories of onions - how she could have been knocked over by a feather to see Andrew although he _clearly_ wasn't much cop at fishing and - after a further side excursion covering the very tastiest types of fish - did he think it would be very hard to learn to set rabbit snares?

"I believe knowing where the rabbits are likely to _be_ is the difficult part," Foyle said.

"Like fish, sir?" she asked. "Not that rabbits are like fish, of course, but in the knowing where they are part."

"Mmhmm," Foyle said. He took off his hat and studied the brim. He'd assumed, the night before, that Sam would take the opportunity of the drive back to the airfield to break the news to Andrew of his impending fatherhood, but her casually cheerful mention of his visit made him suspect she hadn't. Whether Andrew had responded as the man his father hoped he was or the boy he suspected his son might still be, the Samantha Stewart of Foyle's experience could not have concealed her reaction either way.

There was time, of course, but not a great deal of it. A child born seven months after marriage might be passed off as an early birth in a general agreement by friends and neighbours to accept the story; at five months or less, however, there would be far less willingness to turn a blind eye.

_Damn it_, he thought, and put his hat back on. "Sam."

"Yes, sir?"

"Look, not my business, _obviously_, but I just wanted you to know …" Foyle searched for the right words. "About your _situation_."

"My situation, sir?" she asked.

"I _know_, Sam," Foyle said.

"Know what, sir?" she asked in puzzlement.

He turned to look at her, saying again: "I _know."_

Sam gave him a baffled glance. "So you said."

He sighed. "I _know_ about your … about your ration book."

"My ration book?" she echoed.

"Yes."

"Um," Sam said. "What _about _my ration book, sir?"

Foyle winced, and frowned out the window. "I saw it."

"You saw my ration book." She paused. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't quite follow."

Foyle closed his eyes. _No help for it._ He said rapidly: "Sam, I know you're in the family way."

There was a small, intense silence.

Then Sam stood hard on the brakes and brought the car to a sudden halt in the middle of the lane. She turned to stare at him, eyes wide, opened her mouth, and closed it again.

"I …" Foyle glanced at her, looked away, settled his hat more firmly on his head. "Look, Sam, you don't need to talk to me, it isn't my business, but I _couldn't _help noticing, your ration book, and so on."

"Whu?" Sam said.

"It's a distinctive color," Foyle pointed out. "And I don't know - _really_ none of my concern, I know, but I _do _- whatever happens, Sam, you can rely on me."

She made another indistinct noise, and then swallowed hard, and said blankly: "Gosh, sir."

"I should have - I didn't want you to think you had to … _keep_ it from me," Foyle said, and hastily added, "unless you wanted to."

Behind them, a lorry honked. Sam seemed oblivious. "Uh," she said. "Right."

"We should, ah …" Foyle said. "Move over?"

She started, and hastily threw the car back into gear, stamped on the accelerator, and swerved to the verge. The lorry passed them with a final blast of the horn.

"If you need …" Foyle said. "If I can help. The pram, for example."

"The pram," she repeated numbly.

"I saw you'd been looking at it," he said diffidently. "In the classifieds."

"I, um," Sam said. "I suppose I was. And it's awfully nice of you, sir. Awfully decent."

"Don't mention it," Foyle said hastily. "If there's anything else, you just … let me know, all right? I'm sure Andrew will do the right thing, if that's what you want, but I know with prices what they are these days his pay won't go far."

"Andrew," Sam said rather blankly. "I see. That, um. Makes sense. That you'd - for the prospective future Mrs Foyle."

"Andrew is, ah … he's a good man at heart," Foyle said. "This might not be ideal but that doesn't mean …" He stopped. Sam's shoulders were slumped and she looked almost on the verge of tears. "Sam?"

She took a deep breath. "Hypothetically, sir," she said. "If I wasn't - that is, if the prospective future Mrs Foyle didn't happen to _me_. If Andrew had -nothing to do with anything. If I were - if it was somebody else?"

Foyle frowned. _Not Andrew? _"Sam. Are you telling me …?" He sorted through possible suspects, considering and rejecting them one after the other. _Couldn't possibly be someone at the station without me knowing, that American has been posted out, Tony hasn't been home on leave in a year … _

Sam sighed, and closed her eyes. "It's understandable, sir, that you'd - obviously feel rather differently. Of course."

"We-ell," Foyle said, chewing his lip, "I suspect a stern fatherly talk would have less effect on someone _else._" He paused. "But I'll have a try, if you'd like. And you can rely on me, Sam. Whatever … I'll help you in any way I can. In any way you want. _If_ you want."

She turned to look at him. "Really, sir? I mean, _really_? Even if Andrew and I - even if it were nothing to do with Andrew."

"Even if it were nothing to do with Andrew," he assured her. "Sam. You can rely on me. Whatever the circumstances of your … _circumstances._" He touched her shoulder. "If there's anything. Just let me know."

"Thank you, sir," Sam said, with a slightly watery smile. "There, ah. Won't be."

Foyle tugged at his hat brim. "Well, _if _there is."

"No, sir," she said, and he realized she was blushing furiously. "There _won't _be. I'm not, sir."

"_Not_?" Foyle asked.

"Not PWP, sir."

"Ah. I'm -" _sorry_ was on his lips, but that would be insensitive. For an unmarried girl, losing a pregnancy might well be a relief rather than a cause for grief. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, sir, perfectly," she said, blushing harder. "I mean, I never _was_. It wasn't _my _book, sir. I've been picking up Mrs Wilson's rations for her, she's having a difficult time of it and the doctor's put her on bed rest. Mrs Henderson was going to do her shopping but since I've got the car, that is, since you very kindly let me drive home sometimes, I said I would."

"_Oh,"_ Foyle said.

"It's all properly authorised," she hastened to assure him.

"I, ah .. I see." He was relieved for her, and, he realized suddenly, unaccountably saddened, at the same time. "I, ah … well I'm very sorry, Sam, to have … that is, _totally_ unwarranted conclusions."

"Not at all, sir," she assured him with what Foyle thought was unreasonably generous forgiveness, still pink. "Understandable mistake. It does explain a few things, though. Gosh, I'm almost _glad_. I was _frightfully_ worried you were gearing up to agree with my father that the best place for me was Lyminster."

"Well, I …" He hesitated, settled on: "Was concerned."

"Yes, I gather." Sam stopped, turned to him, eyes wide. "Oh, golly, sir," she said, horrified, "you didn't say anything to Andrew, did you?"

"No, no, not at all." He took off his hat and studied the inside of it. _Nup, no justification there._ "No-ot … specifically."

"Not _specif _- so that's what he meant!" Sam said. "I say, sir, he was rather peeved with you."

"Yes, I can imagine he was. I, ah. Miss Marcus - Jen. Might be under the impression." Foyle put his hat back on. "Made rather a hash of things, haven't I?"

"Oh," Sam said, and then, with a look of enlightenment: "_Oh_. That explains it." She closed her eyes. "Oh, plurry heck. _Please_ tell me you didn't say anything to Daddy."

"No, no," he assured her hastily.

"Well that's _something_," Sam said. "So it's just Jenny who thinks I'm in the club."

"Really am terribly sorry," Foyle said again.

She turned to look at him again. "It is _just_ Jenny, isn't it? You haven't been - organizing a whip-round at the station for my layette or anything?"

"Good god, no," Foyle said, appalled.

"Then you'll just have to tell Jenny you were wrong," she said firmly. "As soon as possible, please."

"I'll telephone as soon as we get to the station," Foyle promised hastily. He chewed his lip. "It was unforgivable of me to … make that kind of assumption about your private life, Sam."

"Well I suppose I wouldn't have been the first girl in Hastings to lose her judgement over a man in uniform," she said. Foyle winced, but Sam was starting the car again and didn't see. "You really _ought_ to have said something," she said sternly.

"I … wanted to give you the chance to tell me … in your own time," Foyle said.

"You were very decent about it," Sam said generously. "If I _were_, not that I _would_ be, but I'm rather glad to know that you, well." She paused, and added, "I do promise I'll tell you if I get into those sort of difficulties, sir, but you _must _promise me not to make me stay with the car all the time just because you think I _might_ be."

"I do promise," Foyle said.

"Good." She took the next corner neatly, if a little too fast for Foyle's comfort. "Because I shall need all the experience I can get."

He turned to look at her again. "And why is that?"

"I've decided to join the police, sir," Sam said, adding quickly: "After the war, of course."

"Oh _have_ you," Foyle said. "And what will your father say?"

"He'll be livid," Sam said. "But I shall cross that bridge when I come to it. After all, the war might go on for years yet. _Anything_ could happen."

"You might change your mind, f'instance," Foyle said dryly.

"I might get a bomb dropped on me too, sir, and frankly, that seems rather _more_ likely." She drove in silence a moment. "I thought you'd be more, um. Pleased."

Foyle frowned. "It wouldn't be easy, Sam. There aren't very many women police officers in the whole country."

"Yes, sir, I know," she said. "No reason I couldn't be one of them, though, is it? I mean, there aren't very many Detective Chief Superintendents in the whole country but _you're_ one of them."

"We-ell. You wouldn't be able to marry, you know."

"Yes, sir, I do realize. But that doesn't look terribly likely anyway, does it?"

"And unless things change very quickly I doubt you'd ever be allowed to be a detective." He studied her. "Which might not be a bad thing, unless you get rather better at not showing every single thought that crosses your mind."

"Yes, sir," she said, chastened.

"But I do think you'd make a very good woman constable, if not a detective, not just yet."

She beamed. "Really, sir?"

"Oh, yes. You're bright, you think on your feet, you keep your head in a crisis," Foyle said. "You have good instincts. You knew Axel Brink had killed himself from the first day."

"I say, sir, I did, didn't I?" Sam said, pleased. "That was jolly clever of me, wasn't it!"

"You did very well the whole way through," Foyle said. "You should be proud of yourself."

"_You_ should be proud of me, sir. I mean - " She blushed a bit. "I mean, if I've done anything to be proud of, it's because of what I've learned from you, and Mr Milner."

"Oh, I am," Foyle said. Ahead of them, the outskirts of Hastings appeared in the distance. "As proud," he added dryly, "as if you were about to make me a grandfather."

"_Sir!_" Sam protested. "I _told_ you I'm _not-_" She shot him an outraged glance, and then closed her mouth with a snap. "You're teasing me again, sir."

"Mi-ight be," Foyle conceded.

"You think I can't tell, sir, but I _always_ can," she said loftily. "I'm-"

"Very perceptive," Foyle finished. _Rather more perceptive, _he thought wryly,_ than __**I've**__ been on certain subjects this week. _"Why you'll do well, on the Force."

She was silent a while, navigating the streets, until she stopped the car outside the station. "Did you mean that, sir?"

Foyle paused with his hand on the handle of the door. "That you'd do well on the Force?" he asked. "Absolutely. If it's what you decide you want."

"No, sir," Sam said, coloring a little. "Did you mean it when you said you were proud of me?"

"Mmm," Foyle said. "Well, the truth is …" He opened the door and got out, then turned back. Sam was sitting very straight, hands on the wheel, but her face was a study of wordless appeal.

Foyle settled his hat on his head, and leaned down. "Truth is, I … _couldn't be proude_r. Now come on, time to see what the criminal classes of Hastings have been up to in our absence."

Her face lit up. "Yes, sir!" she said, scrambling out of the car as he started up the steps.

She caught up with him as he opened the door.

They entered the station together.

.

.

.

_~fin~_

* * *

A/N :

The difference between a seven-month post-marriage baby and a five-month one is based on my grandmother's remarks one Christmas (after a few too many sherries) about her own panicked rush down the aisle. Even knowing that her severe morning-sickness would likely abate by her second trimester, she was determined to get wed before her third month. This enlightened me as to the truth behind the family story of Grandma vomiting into her bouquet right before 'I do'.

There were a few hundred female police officers in England at the time, almost all in London, and over the previous decades many of the restrictions on their activities and powers had been lifted (it may seem bizarre, but female police officers were not allowed to made arrests until 1923 or take fingerprints until 1937). Although women police officers had been required to resign on marriage before the war, the bar was lifted and married women allowed to rejoin during the war years. This was considered a temporary measure, hence Foyle's comment to Sam, but was made permanent in 1946.

The first "Woman Detective Constable" was not appointed until 1973.

Thank you to everyone who has read this far. If you've left a review, I thank you - it's the only payment we fanfic writers get. And if you haven't already, please consider leaving a review!

The next story in this series, "The Frost of the Stars", featuring Amelia Winston (named by Utopia) as well as Wolseley's and Jewell's named characters (do send me those names!), will be coming soon, along with a shorter story "Things Ain't What They Used To Be" featuring Milicent Lovell (named by Anne BronteRocks).


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